This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Inspired by the sagebrush and wide open horizons of Wyoming and
Montana, Clyde Aspevig is a landscape painter who does sketches on
location and finishes the work in his studio. Although he was
trained to be an art educator, he has had little formal training as a
painter, but has studied the work of artists he much admires including
John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, and Winslow Homer.
His
obvious talent has won him prestigious recognition including the
Frederic Remington Award and the Robert M. Lougheed Memorial Award,
both from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. He is a member of the
Northwest Rendezvous Group, and is the first Montana artist since
Charlie Russell to exhibit at Grand Central Galleries in New York City.
He
was born in Rudyard, Montana, and raised on a small working wheat farm
near the Canadian border. He became mindful of people's reliance
upon the land, although he left the farm to attend Eastern Montana
College in Billings. However, he dropped out to spend the winter
in the Bear Paw Mountains and then returned for a degree in art
education. He taught for one year in Sandy, Oregon High School
and went back to Montana with his wife, artist Carol Guzman, to paint
full time. From 1988, the couple has lived in Loveland, Colorado
where he remodeled an historic church for his studio.
Aspevig
travels widely to paint, choosing landscape subjects in the Southwest
and the West including along the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, and
in foreign places such as England, Italy and the Caribbean.
Of
his feelings about nature, he says: "Paintings are a spiritual
communion with nature which results in my celebration of life. Toward
this end, I yearn for country that has not been tainted by subdivision,
power poles, billboards, and water slides. I choose to paint my
pictures as if I, or the viewer, were the first person to set foot upon
the landscape". (Hagerty 20)
Sources include:
Peggy and Harold Samuels, Contemporary Western Artists
Donald Hagerty, Leading the West
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Biography from Thomas Nygard Gallery:
| Considered by many to be the foremost representational landscape
painter of our time, Clyde Aspevig has exhibited his work at many
important museum and gallery shows throughout the country. He is
a recent winner of the Gold Medal at the National Academy of Western
Art.
Clyde Aspevig was born to Gertrude and Donald Aspevig in 1951 on a farm
near Rudyard, Montana, just south of the Canadian Border. At
eleven years of age, he fell off a horse and severely broke his
leg. During his convalescence his uncle, Roald Haaland, an
amateur painter, introduced him to oil paints.
In 1969, Aspevig moved to Billings, Montana and began majoring in Art
at Eastern Montana College, now Montana State University -
Billings. It is here that he began selling his first paintings
which were small watercolors.
After receiving his degree in Education, Aspevig moved to Sandy, Oregon
where he taught art at Sandy Union High School. He soon moved
back to Montana to paint full-time. Aspevig's efforts bode well
for him, and success soon followed.
During the late 1970s and 80’s Aspevig began establishing a national
reputation for himself. His work was promoted through many
one-man shows and prestigious awards he received. At his Grand
Central Galleries show in New York City, one of his patron’s commented
on how wonderful it was to have "good art" in New York City again.
His deep attachment to the Western landscape is evident in his body of
work. He spends considerable time outside communing with the
landscape in order to open up his emotions to the psychological aspects
of the land around him.
Many young artists are satisfied with that which has given them
success. Clyde Aspevig however, continues to seek new challenges and
has altered his style. He began suggesting – not replicating –
detail. He leaves in just enough to make the viewer believe in
the place while leaving the rest to be developed by the power of an
individual’s imagination. He says this evokes, "a deeper response
than a literal or detailed interpretation". |
Biography from Altermann Galleries and Auctioneers, Santa Fe I:
| Oil painter of the vanishing Montana countryside, born in Rudyard, Montana in 1951 and living in Ballantine, Montana since 1976. “The Montana terrain offers everything,” Aspevig asserts, “from spectacular mountains to almost desert-like conditions. You’d have to be pretty picky to run out of things to paint here. I’m so thankful that I grew up in that area. It was so unspoiled and free. And my upbringing provided me with a strong moral foundation. Anyone who’s living in the country knows that I’m talking about.
Raised in a farming community on the Canadian border. Aspevig became adult at 12 when his father died. He left the farm to attend Eastern Montana College in Billings, dropped out to spend an isolated winter in the Bear Paw Mountains, and then returned for a degree in art education “so I’d have a profession to fall back on.” After one year of teaching in Sandy, Oregon, high school, he came back to Montana to paint full time. He works up to ten hours a day, blocking in a landscape in the field and finishing it in the studio. The Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers are favorite locales.
Aspevig believe that Montana is “one of the last pristine areas in the country,” and now it is being strip-mined. “We need to be very cautious about how we use out resources. Land like this is so fragile,” he emphasizes, and he has donated prints to an environmental organization.
Resource: Contemporary Western Artists, by Peggy and Harold Samuels 1982, Judd’s Inc., Washington, D.C.
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