Exhibit features artist who paints history

Artist Tom Saubert fancies himself a “historian that loves to paint.”

Growing up in Great Falls, Saubert remembers the slices of history he just missed — the days of the Blackfeet and cowboys and the world of Charlie M. Russell’s paintings.

“I’d just missed it. It was just over the horizon and there were all these connections still there, my grandpa’s old cowboy friends that still spoke in that old cowboy lingo that’s gone now,” Saubert said. “I just loved all that stuff. I don’t know why I was fascinated with old people and old stuff, but I was. I still am.”

Saubert’s work will be on display at Underscore Art Gallery in Whitefish during the month of August, beginning with an exhibition this week.

That love of Montana’s history has had a monumental influence on Saubert’s career.

Since returning to Montana from art school in 1973, Saubert has made his living painting realistic depictions of plains Indians and other historical subjects.

His choice of subject matter was anything but popular around the time he was leaving school, he says.

Saubert attended the Cleveland Institute of Art starting in 1969, graduating with a bachelors of fine art in painting and illustration.

“When I was in school, the thing that was popular was the New York scene. So you had [Jackson] Pollock and [Willem] de Kooning and all those guys, they were the big deal. So all the students I was around were hiding in their little cubbies trying to do abstract realism and they were 20 years old. They didn’t have a clue about anything, much less being an expressionist, which I thought was kind of humorous,” he said with a laugh. “They thought I was kind of a prostitute because I did realism, which was passé. But that was my whole background and that’s what I wanted to do and still do.”

Coming out of art school, Saubert was faced with two options — he could take a literary illustrator position in New York, or he could return home and try to make it as a fine art painter in the Flathead.

He chose the latter.

“There was a little art community here at that time, five or six easel painters that I knew of. With [my wife’s] permission, we came back here to see if I could make it as a fine artist,” he said. “It’s had its ups and downs, like anything does, but it’s worked out pretty darn well.”

For Saubert, painting historical scenes is about telling the truth. The small details, the ones almost no one would ever pick up on, matter. His work serves as both a record of how life truly was as well as an homage to the cultures he depicts.

“Authenticity is way up there on the list of principles that I apply to my painting, because there’s so much western art out there that’s Hollywood, people are painting it because it sells well,” he said. “And I guess maybe because I grew up around Indian people. I think it’s really important to tell the truth on these cultures, because the more you study the culture it’s so fascinating and wonderful, that I owe it to them, to tell it truthfully.”

Saubert recalled a visitor at one of his gallery shows in Jackson Hole who interrogated him on why he paints these scenes he’s never actually seen before.

He says he responded by noting that he’s seen nearly everything he paints with his own eyes.

Leading up to a painting, Saubert creates the scene he’ll put to canvas in the real world, dressing models and horses in some of the garb and artifacts that line the walls of his studio. He’ll take photos and sketches of all the details in the scene at different times of day, often coming away from each reference shoot with dozens more ideas for paintings than he arrived with.

Once he’s seen it, he paints it.

“It’s kind of like setting a movie scene a little bit. You just sit there and watch all that stuff come back to life and it’s wonderful. That gives you so much not just experience but also the painting possibilities become kind of endless. Everything is kind of wonderful,” he says. “I’ve seen every single thing I’ve painted, because I’ve recreated it all.”

Saubert’s work is featured at Underscore Art Gallery in Whitefish this month, including two events this week. He will display two series of works at the gallery beginning on Thursday, Aug. 1 corresponding with the Whitefish Gallery Nights event. On Friday, Aug. 2 he will host a talk about his work from 5 to 7 p.m.

The two series he’ll show depict the war horse masks of the Plains Indians, an esoteric and relatively unknown aspect of the culture, and scenes of the Blackfoot Medicine Lodge.

The works are important for their subject matter, but also for the context from which they came.

This week’s show is Saubert’s first since overcoming pancreatic cancer, which he was diagnosed with a year ago.

Since the end of April, he’s painted every day to get ready for this show, which has been a big priority as he worked through recovery.

“It’s been an important goal. I spent a year basically having surgeries and recovering from all that and came miraculously out with no cancer and a really good prognosis,” he said. “It’s a huge blessing.”

For more information on Saubert, visit www.tomsaubert.com.