Meet Me in Russell Country

Four Western artists rendezvous in Central Montana to prepare for a 2027 show.

By Gina Teichert | Photography by Crystal Wise

In Central Montana, buttes turn blue above the prairie, cutting blockish silhouettes against endless skies. Early explorers gave them names like fort and haystack, steamboat and palisade. Several of these land masses sport the name Square Butte today, the two most recognized on either side of Great Falls.

To the east, Judith Basin takes its name from Captain William Clark’s love interest. Another 75 years after Lewis and Clark passed through these parts, 16-year-old Charlie Russell left a well-to-do family in Missouri to try his hand at being a cowboy. And as the local tourism board boasts, Montana “never gave him back.”

Whitney Gardner, left, Chloé Marie and Amery Bohling in Montana, July 2026.

Behind action-packed scenes of Western life, Russell painted these buttes, sometimes with fidelity, and sometimes purely with vibes. “Russell never was a slave to geography,” writes David Murray for the Great Falls Tribune. “Images resembling these distinctive buttes,” in addition to other Montana landmarks, “appear again and again, often divorced from the context of a precise geographic location,” Murray explains in his essay retracing the steps of the area’s best-known artist.

As Cerro Pedernal was to Georgia O’Keeffe, the buttes were to Russell, inspiring interpretation after interpretation. Today, history buffs and young artists make the pilgrimage to Central Montana to seek inspiration and stand in the boots of one of the greats.

Chloé Marie, Oval Hills Study, oil on canvas sheet, 9 x 12 in.

“The ranch I live on goes back through many generations and they used to be best friends with him,” says French-born, Montana-based painter Chloé Marie. “He used to come paint on this ranch. My studio window faces the view he used to paint from this place,” she adds, noting Square Butte’s appearance in many of Russell’s watercolors.

“I can imagine the wildlife population, although it’s still very populated, but back then it must have been insane. There were no cars or trucks or airplanes crossing over. It must have been incredible,” Chloé Marie says. “I feel pretty privileged to be living here.”

Amery Bohling, Study of Square Butte, oil, 8 x 10 in.

After stints in Texas and France, Chloé Marie is back in Montana and sharing her world with fellow Western artists. In July, she invited Arizona painter Amery Bohling, California painter Whitney Gardner, and Texas photographer Crystal Wise out to Russell country for a girls’ trip.

“I had never seen Montana before and so I didn’t really know what to expect,” Gardner says. “Chloe lives in such a remote place. I mean, her driveway is 30 minutes, and it’s interesting because I live alone on a ranch as a Western painter. I was intrigued to see how Chloé’s doing it because she lives alone on a ranch as a Western painter, but she’s doing it in a way that’s much more remote and much more secluded than I am.”

“These sweeping vistas and the landscape are just so gorgeous. It wasn’t really like anything I had seen before, so it was exciting as a landscape painter to see this prairie and these buttes and the colors. It’s just so different than what I’m used to in the desert,” says Gardner, who lives outside of Joshua Tree National Park.

Whitney Gardner walks in front while searching for painting locations.

Painting, hiking and camping her way up to Montana, Gardner explored the Sierras and Idaho’s Sawtooth Range along the way before syncing up with the ladies who had flown in. “I was jealous of the road trip because flying with art supplies is just not fun,” Bohling says. She and Chloé Marie connected through Mark Maggiori’s and Petecia Lefawnhawk’s Far West exhibition, where Gardner also exhibited. While the three painters share a lot of overlap through galleries and museum shows, their friendship mostly evolved online.

“We really didn’t really know each other much at all and we were basically just following each other on Instagram. Then I was like, you know what, I’m going to throw an invitation to those two and we’ll see what happens,” Chloé Marie says. “It was really fun to spend a whole week together and get to know each other and also learn from each other because we’re all very different artists. I think it was very interesting in that way, throwing Crystal in the mix with her photography. Everyone came from a different place—Texas, Arizona, California—and everyone met here in Montana, so it was pretty cool to rally up the whole West to come up to Montana.”

Amery Bohling, left, Whitney Gardner and Chloé Marie discuss next steps.

Painting Square Butte in the distance.

Crystal Wise, a fine art photographer and creative director in Fort Worth, Texas, connected with Chloé Marie on assignment for a magazine a few years ago. The photo essay mirrored Chloé Marie’s work, with the artist (who also barrel races) flying through the air on horseback.

“Then we’ve just been buds ever since. She’s been a great mentor for me, gives me great advice, a great friend,” says Wise. “She’s like, I have this group of girls that I was going to invite to my place in Montana. I had been meaning to visit Chloé anyway, so I went up and photographed them and drank wine and had girl dinners and we went hiking and had the best time. It was good for me too, to just be somewhere so serene and beautiful and just shoot what felt right to me. I shoot a lot of editorials and a lot of planned shoots, so it was kind of nice just to be out there and just shoot beautiful sunsets every night, and it was a good palate cleanse for me.”

Whitney Gardner, Montana Ranch Afternoon Study, oil on panel, 8 x 10 in.

Gardner elaborates, “I almost felt like there wasn’t a separation between painters and photographer, right? Because there were sessions where we’re both working. She was taking photos of us and the landscape. But we kind of all jumped into our thing and we’re just working alongside each other and Crystal, to me, could have very well had an easel in front of her instead of a camera…And she’s so lovely. I mean, we all shared our journey into art and, you know, even her technique and the way that she sees and the way she interprets her experience. I mean, to me, it translates to painting kind of seamlessly.”

Wise enjoyed being in Russell’s stomping grounds while learning from the other artists. “They had so much knowledge about him,” she says. “So that was kind of fun to see, and just as a photographer being with these painters, I learned so much about their process and how they use color and how I use color. There’s a lot of similarities, which was a lot of fun to explore.”

Chloé Marie at her easel.

“I love that about artists, that everyone kind of gets into it or has their own story or their own path. There’s not one way to do it,” echoes Gardner.

Bohling agrees. “Community is key,” she says. “I don’t personally feel like there’s not enough room for everyone at the top. We have a lot of stuff in common and it’s really nice to hang out with other people as serious about art as I am. It is nice because you kind of have to be a little off to only want to paint…We’re going to have our own challenges and, you know, especially when you’re in Western art, it’s really great to find other women in this business that you can bounce ideas off of and talk to and organize shows together and do all those things that we want to do. We have ideas of where we want to go. We hope to visit each other’s locations, so a trip to the Grand Canyon, a trip to Wonder Valley and do similar works there…we have a lot of ideas that I think are going to be a lot of fun, and Montana was kind of the beginning,” she says.

Whitney Gardner, left, Amery Bohling and Chloé Marie taking in the sunset.

Chloé Marie sees this as the beginning of something grander for the four artists. “It started from nothing and then it quickly escalated to something that, I think, is going to be a lot bigger,” says Chloé Marie. “We’ll see where this takes us.”

While each artist has a busy few months ahead with fall and winter shows, they’re planning a 2027 exhibition that will include work inspired by their Montana adventure. Russell Country has left its mark on the painters, but so have the artists on Russell Country. Expect to see more of their work in the near future. —