Marvin “Skeez” Messing, whose contemplation of the human condition led him to a life of painting, sculpting and printmaking, died Friday at Hidden Meadows Memory Care in Columbia Falls. He was 92.

In addition to being an artist, Messing is remembered by many in the Flathead Valley as a teacher. He taught portraiture and oil painting for about 11 years at Flathead Valley Community College.

His art explored the complexities of human nature and society as a whole. In a Daily Inter Lake article published in 2008, Messing described the drive behind his art.

“Our nature is a paradox — divine yet savage; compassionate, yet monstrous. I question aspects of this paradox in graphic and symbolic images,” he said.

Messing’s artistic influences were drawn from Salvador Dali and Francisco de Goya, according to his daughter, Pam Hughes, of Whitefish. While his art may be considered surrealist, Messing said in the 2008 interview that he preferred to describe it as “contemplative.”

“He wanted people to contemplate it,” Hughes said. “He believed artists had a responsibility to make people think or to evoke an emotion through art.”

Another of his daughters, Kris Messing, of Florence, said she hopes people remember her father as a thought-provoking artist, receptive to people’s interpretations of his work.

Hughes added that her father was extremely disciplined and considerate of others.

A native of Freeport, Ill., Messing attended the Art Institute of Chicago prior to joining the Navy Seabees. He married his high school sweetheart, Ann, just 36 hours before shipping out. During World War II he served two years in the South Pacific and stateside.

After his military service he returned to Freeport to work in the family business, a sporting goods store, and taught art in an adult education program.

When he wasn’t working, Messing was painting in his studio.

“From about 7 to 11 p.m. he would be painting or sculpting,” Hughes said, recalling that he painted to a musical piece titled the “War Requiem.”

The 1960s was a prolific period in his art career, and Messing himself was an activist during the Civil Rights Movement, according to Hughes.

Following his retirement he continued his education with art classes at Highland and Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, Ill.

When he moved to the Flathead Valley in 1985 he enrolled in art classes at Flathead Valley Community College before he became an instructor.

It wasn’t until he reached the later stages of Parkinson’s disease that Messing physically could no longer paint.

To help their father maintain his connection to art, they hung one of his paintings by his bedside.

Kris Messing described the painting: “It is of a human walking into this ethereal forest and in the foreground he has shed what would appear to be a coat disappearing into the soil. It basically was a picture of death — shedding of the body and the soul going forth. Several times when he was going on the downward spiral he would fixate on that.

“It was the journey he was going to be taking.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at [email protected].