Lakeside artist teaches painting to national TV audience

Painter Gary Spetz moved to Lakeside three years ago, in part because the Northwest Montana landscape offers a lifetime of artistic inspiration.

But for "Gary Spetz's Painting Wild Places! with Watercolors," his new nationally distributed television program for American Public Television, Spetz is taking a wider view.

Spetz, 48, is currently in Florida, working on an episode to appeal to viewers drawn to the warmer wilderness climates.

Spetz's weekly program, released to air on Public Broadcasting Service stations nationwide on Jan. 1, gives aspiring painters tours of some of the country's most stunning wilderness scenery and then offers them step-by-step instruction on how to capture the beauty in watercolor.

Spetz and his wife, Marlene, are executive producers of the program, with Mike Gunter, owner of the local company Glacier Lily Productions, serving as associate producer.

The 30-minute instructional programs are split into two parts for each locale, with footage of the scene interspersed with time in Spetz's Lakeside studio.

With the program aimed at beginners and more experienced painters alike, Spetz tries to make each episode "user friendly."

"Beginning painters often get hung up on composition and values," he said. "I teach a method where key shapes are isolated at the start of the painting, with a liquid masking material, which greatly simplifies the watercolor painting process. It enables a painter to focus more incrementally on smaller segments of the painting."

The first two episodes, "Learn to Paint Lake McDonald" are focused on Glacier National Park.

In other episodes, Spetz takes viewers to Kauai's Bali Hai ridge in Hawaii, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Yellowstone National Park, Cabbage Key in Florida and Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior.

Spetz does not paint on location, but he said his studio footage is still designed to keep viewers interested.

"We put a different spin on step-by-step," he said. "It's highly edited and it's not live time but it appears to be."

The series evolved from Spetz's instructional painting videos.

American Public Television was impressed with the video series and asked Spetz for 13 episodes, which he began working on last March. With those long completed, he is now under contract for 13 more.

So far about 120 stations have picked up "Painting Wild Places!"

"These kinds of series tend to be long running," Spetz said. "We've had positive feedback so far, but it takes time to get a national audience. I hope to stay in it for quite some time."

He already has an established following in his home state, Minnesota.

After spending a few decades' worth of vacations visiting Glacier, Spetz said he and Marlene decided to relocate closer to the park after their youngest child left for college.

As his original plans were to head for law school after graduating from the University of Minnesota, Spetz is largely a self-educated artist. He has received a number of awards for his painting, including seven acceptances into the Top 100 National Park painting collections of the National Park Academy of the Arts. His works have been published in the books "Searching for the Artist Within" and "Art From the Parks."

His work has been collected and commissioned by corporations such as US West, Georgia Pacifica, Federated Insurance and General Mills.

"Gary Spetz's Painting Wild Places! with Watercolors" airs at 1 p.m. on Fridays on Montana Public Television station KUFM.

For more information, visit www.PaintingWildPlaces.com