Lois Sturgis is in love with color.

From the softer hues of watercolors to the bolder shades of silk painting, the Kalispell artist’s passion for bright colors is evident in her work. For the last few decades, Sturgis has captured everything from flowers to sailboats to friends’ pets on canvas.

Sturgis says her interest in art began in a place that’s probably familiar to other women and girls.

“I was like most little girls my age: I drew horses,” she said. “I drew horses for quite a long while.”

But Sturgis’ art career really started as an adult, when she discovered watercolors. Kalispell artist Vern Wyman introduced her to the medium, and Sturgis was hooked from the start.

She laughed when she admitted part of watercolors’ attraction was price.

“At first I thought it would be less expensive. We didn’t have a lot of money,” she said. “But I was wrong.”

The cost of matting and framing watercolors adds up quickly, she explained, and the materials aren’t much cheaper than oils. But watercolors have remained Sturgis’ passion over the years.

“I just love the way the colors blend together,” she said. “I like to work kind of fluidly; I probably use more water than some people do.

“There’s just a lot of opportunities and sometimes surprises” in working with watercolors

Sturgis began painting in Kalispell but gave it up for a time when the family moved to Stryker. She was busy with other things then, including raising a family and a garden and working for the U.S. Forest Service. Sturgis said she was part of one of the first women’s crews on the forest and worked at planting and thinning trees. Eventually she started doing reforestation and timber surveys.

She continued working for the Forest Service when she and her husband moved back to Kalispell about 25 years ago. Sturgis worked at the Tally Lake Ranger District in Whitefish and then spent about a year and a half at the Hungry Horse district.

But she also found time to return to painting. Sturgis took several workshops and classes at Flathead Valley Community College, but for the most part, she said, she has been self-taught.

She began selling her paintings to make room for more, she said.

“I thought, if I’m going to keep this up, I’m going to have to sell some of these so I can have some more frames and do more painting,” she said.

In 2010, Sturgis had the opportunity to combine her passion for painting with her enjoyment of spending time in the woods. She and two other artists, Sandra Marker and Julie Wulf, were selected for the Artist-Wilderness-Connection Program.

The program, sponsored by the Hockaday Museum of Art, Flathead National Forest, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation and Swan Ecosystem Center, gives artists the opportunity to spend up to two weeks in a cabin in the Flathead National Forest and focus solely on their art. Sturgis and her friends spent 10 days painting at Spruce Cabin up the Middle Fork.

When they were finished, they donated a piece of artwork to the program and gave a presentation about the experience.

“It was quite an opportunity to get to do that,” Sturgis said. “It’s a lot of work to apply and get accepted, but in the long run it was a nice experience. ... I recommend it.”

In recent years, Sturgis has found other outlets for her artwork. She is a member of Paint, Metal and Mud, an artist’s cooperative located in the Kalispell Grand Hotel. Her work can be seen at ARTrageous in Lakeside and some will be on display at Kalispell Regional Medical Center’s new surgery tower when it opens in a few weeks.

Sturgis is also a member of the Montana Watercolor Society, a nonprofit group for the state’s water media artists.

“I’ve done this year after year, but I still need one more time to be a signature watercolorist,” she said. “That’s one of the things that I want to accomplish.”