The Frame of Mind Art Gallery is Missoula's new home for the artwork of Monte Dolack and Mary Beth Percival. Monte's body of work is inspired by his love of nature and mythology, capturing the hearts of nature enthusiasts and art aficianados world wide. Mary Beth Percival's watercolor paintings are an insight into the land where she was born, and celebrate the quiet comforts of daily living.
The Frame of Mind Art Gallery hosts a variety of artists and shows throughout the year. We welcome artists of all locales to submit work to become a part of our art exhibits. We feature Juried art shows, group artist shows, and also welcome artists to submit their work for a solo show.
Follow us here or on Facebook to learn about upcoming shows and opportunities to participate.
Courtney Blazon is an artist and illustrator living and working in Missoula, MT. She is a graduate from Parsons School of Design, where she received her BFA in Illustration. She's shown in Montana at the Missoula Art Museum, Holter Museum of Art and Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, and outside of Montana, she has shown in Seattle, Portland, New York, Philadelphia, Baton Rouge, San Francisco and most recently, in Jackson, Wyoming at the Center for the Arts Gallery. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings (Western Edition), Studio Visit Magazine, and juxtapoz.com. She received a Montana Arts Council Artists Innovation Award in 2011. She is represented by Radius Gallery in Missoula, MT.
Courtney Blazon draws intricate narratives that are layered with symbolism and meaning, in particular, issues surrounding women and the complexities of women’s lives throughout history. Blazon draws influence from mythology, fairy tales, societal expectations and coming-of-age issues and leans into humor, irony and symbolism to create involved stories that are woven together and are not always what they appear to be upon first glance.
"Richard Brautigan was an American writer born in Tacoma, Washington in 1935, and rose to international fame in 1967 with his novel "Trout Fishing in America,” written in his adopted home of San Francisco. He was considered a symbol of the counterculture's youth movement. He was a lifelong depressive and alcoholic, and beyond his countercultural gravitas, he was widely dismissed by critics and his contemporaries for his naivety and lack of literary cultivation. However, he continued to write and write and write with pathos, humor, lack of concern for tradition, and wild imagination until his death by suicide in 1984.
"His novels and poems have been in my life for as long as I can remember. My parents, hippies living in New Hampshire who dreamed of being in the scene in San Francisco, devoured Brautigan's novels and poetry, and there wasn't a single book of his missing from that special bookshelf. I read "In Watermelon Sugar" when I was twelve, in awe of the world he'd created and the mysteries that I felt I could never access. I started to carry around a copy of his poetry book "Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork" as a teenager, both because he was so unknowable to me and he WAS me when I would enter the book; his vague yet stylized, first person poems were anti-feminist and yet, I felt I was the author of them. Even when he was saying something absolutely offensive, I could feel the parts of me that were dirty, naughty and trashy light up in neon, a feeling that has never left me.
"I moved to Montana in 2005, and dreamed of his home in Pine Creek, where he pared down his poetry to such an extent that sometimes the title was longer than the poem itself. You could feel his love for the beauty and stillness in this big sky, and as my love grew for the land and the sky, I became even more connected to him.
"This past year, after turning forty, I started to see how I had grown and morphed from the young girl struggling to understand the words he laid out, to the teen girl who felt the words blush me from the inside out, to the twenty something who started to recognize the yearning and disappointment of the struggle for love and success, to finally, the established creative who felt deeply and completely the words: "Finding is losing something else. I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this."
"It was then that I recognized that the only way I could express my complete devotion to the words of Brautigan and to the meaning they had had in my life for nearly thirty years was to make a body of work about my own personal, feminine experience, through the lens of the wild, sometimes misogynistic, idiosyncratic, and truthful words of his poetry." ~ Courtney
Frame of Mind will be featuring twenty of her completed Brautigan poem drawings that have never been printed or on display until now! She will even bring a collection of some of her other pieces.
Join us for the opening on First Friday or if you can't make it, the show will be on display through August 31st.
This is a free event and open to the public. For more information or questions, please email us at info@frameofmindmt.com, or contact the gallery directly by phone at 406-549-8589.
Frame of Mind invites you to a special art show as we team up with Harvest Home Care to showcase works of art created by their clients. Most have been told they are not creative, but with Harvest Home Care's help, they are now able to express their creativity and share with all of you at Frame of Mind.
Join in supporting Harvest Home Care of Missoula, helping to provide in-home care for elders and people of all ages to maximize well-being, worth, and dignity. Harvest’s goal is to provide home care services that fulfill unmet needs and help individuals in the Missoula and Bozeman area grow and thrive in their community.
While aging brings its challenges, it also brings rewards. Inspired by some of the best practices and innovations in caregiving nationwide, Harvest is also grown by Missoula natives and reflects the values of our unique Montana community. They solve problems, ask what can be achieved, not what can’t, and harness the same creativity and ingenuity their forebears did to build care and connection to each other despite the challenges of resources and location.
Join us, Friday, September 13th from 5:30 to 8:00 at Frame of Mind to support these 3 artists as they rediscover art once again.
Saucers over the Big Stack:
Montana Gold:
Live Wire Choir:
Live Wire Choir was released on May 26th, 1978 and was recorded over a 4 week period while touring. The band consisted of the following members:
Hot Montana Afternoon: 
Leda and the Swan:
A beautifully rendered original gouache on paper painting.This piece depicts a woman bathing in the water of a lake near a swan. Her skin shines with the remnants of the sun soaking on her back, partially protected from a previously worn swimming garment.
Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces Leda. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta.
The piece represents Monte's diverse use of mediums, as he uses the gouache both in the style of a watercolor and as a thicker medium, with a consistency closer to an acrylic paint.
Leda and the Swan
Monte Dolack: 1985
24" x 20"
Gouache on Paper
$1,900.00
Self Portrait:
The piece entitled "Self Portrait" portrays Monte on a warm Montana afternoon after a successful day of fishing. Kneeling in front of a small fishing hole, Monte displays his bounty of Rainbow Trout caught that day.
This piece represents Monte's diverse use of mediums, as he uses the gouache both in the style of a watercolor and as a thicker medium, with a consistency closer to that of an acrylic paint. Self Portrait Monte Dolack: 1984 24" x 20" Gouache on Paper $1,900.00
The pen and Ink drawing by Mary Beth Percival shows her elegant way with a simple pen, and the graphic design capabilities.
Mary Beth did many pieces for small businesses in Missoula. Her combination of Pen and Ink and Watercolor or Gouache would create a clean even image that could be easily read in many different formats. Not only did she use this style of medium for graphic design, but in her artwork as well.
The piece Bear with Fish illustrates the way simple line work can relay the feeling of movement and action. The use of a minimal medium can still transform an image into fast paced movement. The Bear and Fish seem to move freely onto the paper.
Bear with Fish
Mary Beth Percival: 1978
15" x 11.25"
Pen and Ink with Gouache on Paper
$1,500.00
Frame of Mind is pleased to announce the addition of our gallery space to the store. The gallery space is the new home for Monte Dolack and Mary Beth Percival's art work, where we can display the full collection of their posters, fine art prints, notecards, post cards, and lithographs available in stock at our location.
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Monte Dolack is a staple in the world of Montana artwork. His artwork captures the true magic and beauty that is found all around us in Montana. A native of Great Falls, Monte Dolack grew up surrounded by the same sweeping vistas and big sky that inspired Charlie Russell. His love of Montana and passion for the West’s diverse landscapes and wildlife are evident in the images he creates and the commissions he undertakes.
Visit us today to see the artist’s collected works and view a rotating gallery of beautifully framed pieces by both Monte Dolack and Mary Beth Percival.