Sun Road on silk

Artist crafts landscape piece as tribute to famous road's 75th

Bigfork artist Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey created a whimsical yet grand landscape as a huge silk painting tribute for Going-to-the Sun Road's 75th anniversary.

"It's probably the largest commission painting I've ever done," Cawdrey said. "It's definitely oriented to kids."

Using dozens of Glacier National Park icons as a border, the artist captures the awe while infusing a sense of joy and humor with bright, bold colors and playful figures.

"I think one of the most whimsical things is the rabbit," she said, pointing to a bunny peeking from behind a Great Northern Railway logo.

As a June snowstorm raged outside, a poster reproduction of "1933-Going-to-the-Sun Road-2008" provided a sunny counterpoint to the dreary scene outside Cawdrey's studio.

"I made the sun the biggest thing in the entire beastie," she said with a laugh.

Sitting amid the productive clutter of her second story workspace, the energetic artist reflected on her artistic connection to the engineering marvel cut into Glacier Park's sheer cliffs.

"It gets you to a place where you're awestruck by the expanse of landscape," she said. "Every time I drive up that road, I feel the same."

Her journey to producing the landmark Sun Road piece began last fall with a collaboration of representatives of Glacier National Park associations. She said park spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt played a central role in drawing her into the project.

"Amy had seen my work over the last six to eight years," Cawdrey said. "I've done quite a few pieces on Glacier Park - I love the subject matter."

She began by producing drawings and sketches to solicit feedback. Cawdrey said she was "more than willing to have input" on this sort of project.

For instance, she originally planned to have a big red sky, her favorite color, but bowed to sensitivities over wildfire memories.

"I managed to get red in," she said with a laugh, pointing out the red jammers, red-throated hummingbirds and other flourishes.

Cawdrey held her ground on some other details, such as a suffragette making an unsanctioned stand in a jammer with a scarlet scarf blowing behind her and a bear too close for comfort to three surveyors on a roadside.

These touches of whimsy joined dozens of other elements before Cawdrey deemed her design finished. Over the years, she has learned the discipline of designing first.

"No amount of good painting can save a bad composition," she said. "I learned that the hard way with plenty of things that didn't work out."

Her learning curve stretches over a lifetime. She was the daughter of a career officer who served in United States embassies all over the world. Artistic from an early age, she studied the subject, along with political science and journalism, while attending college in France and then the United States.

Although art ruled her heart, Cawdrey, who speaks four languages, said her practical side led her to diversify her education.

"I never knew anyone who made a living at it," she said. "I didn't want to be a struggling artist."

After beginning her career in the art departments of National Geographic and U.S. News, Cawdrey crossed the pond again to run an alternative school in England with her educator husband, Steve.

The couple returned to the United States 28 years ago to start Spring Creek Community School in Thompson Falls. In those demanding years, art became her respite from teaching and coping with troubled teens.

Cawdrey laughed as she spoke of reunions with former students, during which they apologized for transgressions. She believes their constant pushing actually propelled her growth as an artist.

"In a bizarre way, that helped me become a bigger, more confident person," she said. "I had to grow and push back."

Cawdrey said her art began to evolve from soft, dainty watercolors to her signature colorful, expansive style.

After the couple sold their school, Cawdrey committed to follow her dream of making a living making art. For a creative infusion, she traveled to Italy with Steve and their son Morgan to develop a body of work.

Each day, she packed a sandwich and headed out with a portable easel and oil to paint.

"For the first time, I made art central to my life," she said. "I painted almost every day for 10 months."

The artist and her family returned to their new home outside Bigfork with about 120 paintings to launch Nancy Cawdrey Studios/Fox Creek Gallery. They relocated to the Flathead Valley because of its beauty and emerging reputation as an art Mecca.

While still teaching in Thompson Falls, she had found success placing and selling her work through Art Fusion, a Bigfork gallery. She now works with Frame of Reference in Bigfork.

Doors opened at other galleries across the United States in places such as Jackson Hole and Cody, Wyo., Tubac, Ariz., and Carmel, Calif., as collectors clamored for her Western-themed silk paintings.

According to Cawdrey, she came to her popular dye-on-silk medium in a moment of serendipity. While on vacation in Hawaii, she had her breath taken away by an intensely colorful work executed in the traditional Chinese art form.

She began her training on the spot by paying the artist for an afternoon of instruction. Cawdrey said she flowed into silk painting naturally.

"It's very much like watercolors," she said.

When she applied dye to silk for a playful rendering of her Texas grandmother Stella, a Cawdrey cowgirl phenomenon exploded on the art scene. The artist honed her style, developing a national reputation for depicting the contemporary West in silk painting.

With her husband handling their business affairs and scheduling exhibitions, Cawdrey devotes herself to the demanding and meticulous work of producing paintings such as her tribute to Going-to-the-Sun Road.

She said the process of production was grueling from hours of research to execution.

"This was a very ambitious painting - it was challenging," she said. "Of course, some parts of it were very fun

For most of the winter, the roughly 45-by-61-inch painting dominated her studio as she meticulously applied layer upon layer of colorful dyes.

"To get the right values in the trees, I have to do them four or five times," Cawdrey said. "Even the ravens took six to eight layers to get that dark, dark color."

She searched the archives at Hockaday Museum of Art and Glacier National Park for details, such as how the earliest jammers looked driving away. Cawdrey called on Vanderbilt to make certain she had the right tones in depicting the early gravel road.

She researched each bird from the tiny hummingbird and yellow warbler to the red-tailed hawk and bald eagle so children using the painting's 60-item legend find each figure accurately rendered.

According to Lucy Smith, development director at the Hockaday Museum of Art, Cawdrey's hard work paid off. The original was on display outside her office recently.

"School kids came up and tried to name as many birds as they could," she said. "Every age found something special in it."

Smith said people recognized the early characters and appreciated details such as the teepee opening to the east.

The painting forms the core of a major exhibition "Rails, Trails and a Road" celebrating the 75th anniversary of Going-to-the-Sun Road. This exhibit, including other famed artists' work, poetry and historical photographs, is on display from June 26 to Oct. 18.

Hockaday Executive Director Linda Engh-Grady said she hopes the Hockaday's sealed bid wins the Cawdrey original for the museum's permanent Glacier National Park collection.

"For our mission of preserving the art and cultural heritage of the park, this painting is perfect," she said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.