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Montana homecoming for artist Jan Wood Thacker

| September 4, 2020 12:00 AM

The paintings and novels by Jan Wood Thacker will be featured during September at Phillips Studio and Gallery in the Kalispell Center Mall. The First Friday reception will be Sept. 4, from 5 to 7 p.m. (Masks required).

The title of the exhibition is “Montana Homecoming” — fitting since it’s been nearly 50 years since her first showing of paintings.

“They were oil paintings that marched on top of the bookcases of the old library in Whitefish,” Thacker said.

Thacker has shown her work in shows in Alaska, Seattle, and currently in Moses Lake, Washington.

“I sort of do it all. Oils are for serious work, acrylics are for fun, watercolors for delicacy and speed, and soft pastels for pet portrait commissions,” Thacker said. “The most fun for me are huge paintings with bold vibrant colors.”

Thacker is also a longtime journalist, author and newspaper owner.

“My little fictitious town of Danford is really Whitefish in disguise,” she said. Her latest novel, “Montana Legacy,” includes the heritage and customs of the Blackfeet Indians.

A fourth generation Whitefish, Montanan, Thacker’s roots run deep with both sides of her family settling in Whitefish in the 1800s. “My maternal great-grandparents moved there when Whitefish wasn’t even a town.”

Her grandmother, Pearl Geeslin Smith, said to be the first settler child born in Whitefish, talked often of Indians garbed in blankets walking the plank walkways in Whitefish, and of finding arrowheads along the shores of Whitefish Lake.

Thacker’s grandfather, Roger Smith, helped do the rockwork along the Going-to- the-Sun Road in Glacier Park where he earned an extra 15 cents a day as a powder monkey — stuffing dynamite in drilled holes in the rock.

Thacker’s grandparents Fred and Margaret Wood moved to Whitefish around 1915 and settled on a ranch on Trumble Creek. At one time Fred was a steamboat pilot on Flathead Lake.

Her dad owned sawmills in Whitefish area.

“At one time they owned almost the entire highway side of Stillwater Lake, which is where Dad’s sawmill was,” Thacker said

Thacker said Whitefish will always be home.

“Whitefish, my hometown, is the place that will always be dear to my heart. At one time even my great-great-grandmother, Adeline St. Roch Yelle, born in 1836 and whose husband served in the Civil War, lived in Whitefish.

“Montana Legacy” is set in the late 1800s. Her other books feature Whitefish the way it was when she and her sisters were growing up.

photo

Moses Lake, Washington, artist and writer Jan Wood Thacker returns to her Montana roots for her upcoming "Montana Homecoming" show at the Phillips Gallery at the Kalispell Center Mall. The First Friday reception will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 4. Photo courtesy Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald