Local artist Bobbie McKibbin has returned from the second annual Yellowstone Plein Air Invitational with more honors. McKibbin’s work earned her an award for excellence in the 2018 inaugural Invitational. This time she was awarded the Best Body of Work award for the entirety of the work that she produced at the 2019 event.
The 5-day invitational held in Yellowstone National Park is put on by the Yellowstone Forever Institute and celebrates the current and historical presence of art in Yellowstone. This year 16 of the best artists in the nation participated in painting “en plein air” (outside on-site) demonstrations in several places around the park including Specimen Ridge Trailhead, Yellowstone Lake, Artist Point, and Castle Geyser.
Park visitors got the opportunity to attend the daily painting demonstrations and the paint-out that gathered all the artists to paint in one location at the same time at Madison Junction. A banquet and art auction was held at Old Faithful Lodge Recreation Hall on the last day.
What McKibbin manages to do in her own style is produce a complex arrangement of spots, dashes, squiggles and smudges of color that, at a certain distance, congeal into a place that you cannot only see, you can breathe it in.
“My work is shaped by living and working in the West,” said McKibbin. “I see myself as a kind of reporter, someone who documents, a witness to the mystery and beauty that surrounds us. My work faithfully records a sense of place and at the same time celebrates the act of drawing and image-making.”
McKibbin’s work is on display at the Radius Gallery in Missoula or you can visit her Drawn West Studio west of Stevensville by appointment. Call (406) 777-3226 or email MCKIBBIN@grinnell.EDU. You may also visit her website at www.bobbiemckibbin.com.