While challenging at times, this past year has been a time of renewal and creation for two artists who also happen to be good friends.

“Art in the Time of COVID: Oil Paintings by Marnell Brown and Sunnie LeBlanc” will feature works created during this difficult, but inspiring year.

The exhibition at the Bigfork Art and Cultural Center will open July 2 and run through Aug. 7. The center is open Tuesdays through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

An artist’s reception will be held Friday, July 9, from 5 to 7 p.m. In addition, LeBlanc has scheduled a series of “Easel Talks” each Thursday during the exhibition from 3 to 5 p.m. Talks are scheduled for July 8, 15, 22, 29 and Aug. 5. She will be working on a new painting while discussing the creative process and answering questions from interested viewers.

A docent for museums in Montana and Fort Worth, Texas, LeBlanc divides her time between Fort Worth and her home in the Flathead Valley. She calls herself “a hard-edged oil painter” and loves the challenge of portraying the area’s rugged mountains, clear lakes and wild creatures.

For Marnell Brown, life off the grid provides the background for her impressionistic oil paintings that reveal the beauty of life in Montana’s backcountry. Painting directly from nature on artist-prepared boards, her studies of horses, mules and life on a rugged ranch tell of a simple and profound existence.

About the Artists

About 30 years ago, Sunnie and Ray LeBlanc spotted a painting by Marnell Brown in a Whitefish gallery. The simple scene of a man hitching his mules to a plow spoke to the LeBlancs, so they purchased the painting that still hangs in their Montana home. A few years later, the two artists met, taking the first step in a more than 20-year friendship that has now led to their joint exhibition at the Bigfork Art and Cultural Center.

LeBlanc was born and raised in Boston where she grew up riding English saddle, visiting museums and traveling with her family.

For Brown, the mountains were always her home, first in Northern California and later Northwest Montana. Growing up, her focus was on the outdoors where she ran cross-country, skied and later worked as a trail hand in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

On paper, the two couldn’t be more different. But they are remarkably similar in their love of the land they both call home. For more than 20 years, the two have set up their easels in Glacier National Park, the fields near Kalispell and the backcountry north of Whitefish. And while they might be painting in the same location, the end results are striking in both their similarities and their differences in size and style