A local's colors

By ALEX STRICKLAND / Bigfork Eagle

To make it to Danielle Taylor's Local Color art gallery, you've gotta know it's there.

Tucked away on the block behind Electric Avenue, Taylor's endeavor relies on word of mouth and goodwill from other downtown businesses to direct customers her way, something she said nearly everyone does.

"Lots of people send people back here,' she said. "They're excited for me."

Taylor, a 25-year-old Bigfork High School graduate opened Local Color in July of this year and is already making a splash in the Bigfork art scene, as is evident by her ongoing struggle to keep paintings on the walls.

"Most of these," she said as she pointed to one long wall of the gallery, "I painted in the last month."

Taylor's painting, though, isn't limited to what's hanging on the walls. It is the wall. And the counters. And the carpet.

"I didn't have the money to replace a lot of stuff so I just painted it," she said.

The gallery itself, a cinder-block building with a small-town store-front facade, was used to store all sorts of items that accumulated over the 10 years the building had been vacant.

Taylor said the windows were boarded and that inside there was "literally only a path from the front door to the back door" through all the detritus.

Owned by a family member who was willing to take a chance on Taylor, the building at 440 Osborne St. still has a ways to go to match the feel of other galleries downtown, but that's not a bad thing. The plain walls and threadbare carpet make Taylor's work stand out even more. The lively, bright colors of her paintings don't hurt either.

Most of Taylor's work concentrates on Montana landscapes, not surprising considering the newfound appreciation for her home state the artist gained after graduating from college at California State in Sacramento.

"I didn't know how much I would miss it here while I was in California," she said. "I want to capture the energy when you look at the mountains."

Painting in oil and acrylic, Taylor's work runs the gamut in sizes and types of scenes, including a new technique she's painted much of recently that involves photographs.

Taylor takes a standard three by five and mounts it on a larger canvas and then uses paint to finish the scene around the picture. The finished effect blurs the lines of the end of the photo and the beginning of the painting and creates a unique piece.

"It's something I just thought of one day," she said.

When Taylor opened her gallery's doors on July 1 after weeks of remodeling and sprucing up she said she had concentrated so hard on getting the gallery open that she only had enough paintings to fill the walls.

"I just wanted to fill up the gallery," she said with a laugh. "Then people wanted to buy them and I thought, 'How do I take the money?'"

At the outset, Taylor had no way to process credit cards and soon found her supply of paintings dwindling as they were snatched up by both locals and visitors.

Since July it's been a constant effort to produce enough work to meet demand, Taylor said, and the winter slow season will be coming just in time.

"I think a lot of the starving artist thing is about work ethic," she said. "This can't be a hobby, I have to clock in and clock out."

With business going well and downtown slowing for the season, Taylor's envisioning what could be on the back side of Electric Avenue. With the relatively new Osborne Landing complex and a new set of condominiums almost complete, the forgotten side of downtown is looking more and more inviting.

"I hope the back street eventually becomes like the front," Taylor said.

Until then she'll just rely on word of mouth and the quality of her work to draw people off the main drag.

"I've always liked art, but I never thought I could make a living," Taylor said. "Now and I am and it's just surreal."