Whitefish artist takes the plunge from business owner to career painter

By LYNNETTE HINTZE

The Daily Inter Lake

Rob Akey's journey to become a full-time artist has taken the better part of 50 years. But at long last, he's arrived.

It was no whim when Akey and his wife, Kim, decided to sell their successful commercial embroidery business in Whitefish a year and a half ago to accommodate his quest to make a living at oil painting. It was the last step of a calculated plan to realize a dream.

Like many artists, Akey developed an early propensity for drawing and painting and spent much of his idle time as a youngster doodling comic-book characters, the family pet, real and imagined scenery and "whatever presented itself for a kid with a pencil and an itch to draw."

His formal training began with a high school art class as a senior under the tutelage of Ron Kuchenbrod.

"It never occurred to me as a young adult to make a living as an artist," Akey reflected.

Born into a family that valued a strong work ethic, Akey took a pragmatic approach to higher education and didn't immediately pursue art in college, even though he'd received top honors in a state art competition.

Not surprisingly, he returned to Whitefish after a disappointing first year at Montana State University. During the next two years, Akey studied under Bob McKinney, a contemporary impressionist landscape artist known for his use of pure color and palette-knife technique.

"I stretched his canvases and scraped his palette in exchange for instruction," Akey recalled. "Bob believed in the basics, color theory and drawing, and was a great teacher and a real taskmaster. You learned by doing."

McKinney encouraged him to return to college, and back at MSU, one of his instructors saw Akey's potential and helped him assemble a portfolio and applications for fine-art colleges.

Akey earned his degree in design and illustration from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, but the time wasn't right to pursue painting full time. Instead, he signed on with Tonka Toys as a designer.

It was an era of big changes in the toy industry, as Transformers and Go-Bots vied for popularity alongside the more traditional Tonka trucks.

"It was a blast," Akey recalled. "Tonka was a great company to work for."

Nine years later, when Tonka was bought by Hasbro, Akey left the company to work at a toy and hobby company in Colorado in the same position he'd had at Tonka, director of creative services.

Over the next two years, the quest to become a full-time artist intensified and it was time to put a plan in motion.

The Akeys wanted to return to Montana, and Whitefish more specifically, to raise their daughter, Josie, so they gave up corporate careers and studied ways to make a living in the Flathead.

"We researched it fairly completely," he said. "It wasn't a knee jerk. We always assumed I couldn't make it in Whitefish as a graphics artist, so we looked for opportunities that would satisfy various facets of the community."

They decided on commercial embroidery, and Insignia was born in humble quarters, an alley-accessed business on Central Avenue in Whitefish. Kim's work as an office manager with Century 21 helped pay the bills as the embroidery business grew.

Gradually, the business expanded into a bigger facility and grew from four to 22 sewing heads.

"It was nose to the grindstone," Akey said. "Seven years into the business, I knew I had to put off painting [full time]. But I never lost sight of the ultimate goal."

Akey was never far away from his palette, and painted whenever he could. He showed his work sporadically through the 1990s in various galleries.

"I was always good enough to be out there in the arena of art," he said.

When the embroidery business sold 12 years after its inception, Akey's dream had finally come true.

"Now, at 50 years old, here's where we are."

PART OF the journey to becoming a full-time artist was honing his skills along the way. Last winter, he and Kim went to Europe for a two-week "gallery crawl" that took them inside many of the famous art museums in Rome, Florence and Paris.

"Seeing grand art, how it was done and where it's hung, was a huge spark for me," he said. "The last 12 years, I've independently studied painting. Nobody leaves art school after four years ready to paint."

Once Akey made the leap from business owner to self-employed artist, he had to make decisions about where he wanted to display his work. The new North Valley Hospital was among his top choices.

He found a patron to finance two large landscape paintings that will hang in the new hospital and has a commission for a third painting to be hung in the hospital.

"I'm a huge fan of public art," he said. "It's kind of a neglected venue, but what a great opportunity it is for the community to enjoy art."

Akey uses a classical style of oil painting, building scenes slowly over an underpainting of red. He draws inspiration from late 19th-and early 20th-century American art, when a combination of subject matter and technical aspects "came together for a great time in painting."

His work currently is displayed at Samarah Fine Art and Stephen Isley Jewelry in Whitefish, Buffalo Trails Gallery in Bigfork and a gallery in Prescott, Ariz. Akey plans to share his talent by mentoring high-school students interested in spending time at his Whitefish studio to learn the intricacies of oil painting.

PERHAPS THE biggest challenge of establishing himself as a full-time artist is finding a way to stand out from other landscape painters.

"I don't try to think about whether I fit or don't fit. I just try to do it," he said. "It requires you to believe in your talent, that the emotive part will come through and will strengthen my work to hold its place in the great arena of landscape painters."

There have been only a few fleeting moments of second-guessing his decision to go solo with an art career. The scene from "Seinfeld" comes to mind, he said, in which Elaine asks: "Is it possible I'm not as attractive as I think I am?"

A growing interest in his art over the past several months, though, has solidified his choice as the right one.

"At the end of the day, you have to have faith in your work," he said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com