Artists' workshops in picture perfect Montana
Learn how to paint, herd cattle or just relax in rustic luxury at Triple Creek Ranch
“Don’t you feel like we’re back in kindergarten?” asked a giddy Karla Chambers of Oregon as we painted a pale yellow wash onto our blank canvases.
We looked the part. Five of us dressed in smocks sat around an oversized wooden table, palates dotted with blobs of oil paint spread in front of us.
(Lori Rackl/Sun-Times)
PHOTO GALLERY
Playing cowboy and artist in Montana
WHEN TO GO: The ranch is closed in November, March and April. Artists’ workshop weekends are held in the fall. Vintner weekends take place in the spring, when the ranch also puts on its popular Spring Roundups, where guests get to play cowboy.
NEED TO KNOW: Children under 16 years old aren’t allowed.
COST: Nightly rates start at $650 (double occupancy) for the smallest cabin and include meals, alcohol, horseback rides and other on-ranch activities. Extras such as scenic helicopter tours of Yellowstone, off-site fly-fishing excursions and cattle drives can be added at an additional cost.
Triple Creek has a new “Mountain Romance” promotion available Dec. 1-Feb. 28. The $4,060 package includes five nights in a luxury cabin (20 percent off normal rates) and a couple’s massage, among other things.
CONTACT: (800) 654-2943, triplecreekranch.com.
Our teacher was the soft-spoken Montana artist Carol Hagan, whose brightly hued paintings of horses and bears hang in fine art galleries throughout the West.
“That looks beautiful,” Hagan repeated in an encouraging tone, as she mentored us amateurs through a still life of blood-red poppies.
It did feel a bit like kindergarten. Except class was being held in an expansive, sun-filled log cabin in southwest Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. Every October, artists’ workshop weekends are held at Triple Creek Ranch, 600 acres of rustic Rocky Mountain luxury.
The Relais & Chateaux ranch includes 23 upscale log cabins — most with outdoor hot tubs, double steam showers and fireplaces — tucked away among ponderosa pines, trout ponds and horseback and hiking trails snaking straight into the Bitterroot National Forest. The rugged, raw beauty of this slice of Big Sky country is enough to inspire just about anyone’s inner Picasso.
Each weekend workshop features a trio of high-profile Western artists who do demonstrations, display their work and lead hands-on sessions in watercolors, oils and other media. These laid-back, optional sessions last a few hours, leaving you ample time to hop on a horse, hike to an alpine lake or cast a fly for trout at the Orvis-endorsed property. This is Montana, after all.
Even Triple Creek guests who opt not to pick up a paintbrush turn out for one of the weekend’s artistic highlights, called “quick draw.” The pros each spend 10 minutes on a painting before switching to their neighbor’s easel and picking up where he or she left off. Triple Creek owner (and retired CEO of Intel Corp.) Craig Barrett usually gets in on the action. We watched as Barrett added what appeared to be a fisherman jumping out of a canoe to one of the artist’s Montana landscapes.
Barrett’s boat didn’t stay afloat for long.
“We’ll have to do something about that,” said artist Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey, as she erased any trace of the vessel with a few deft strokes of the brush.
Craig Barrett might not be an artist, but he knows art. He and his wife, Barbara, are voracious collectors of Western paintings, prints and sculptures. Much of their collection is displayed in their private home on the ranch. They open this Architecture Digest-worthy house to Triple Creek guests every weekend for an art tour and cocktail party.
The Barretts travel a lot and have a home in Arizona, so they’re not always able to personally host these little soirees. When I visited Triple Creek earlier this month, the Barretts had just flown to the ranch from Moscow. That’s where Barbara Barrett had spent the last several months preparing for a trip that would have been out of this world — literally. She was a backup in case billionaire Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte had to bow out of a trip to the International Space Station. (Laliberte, who paid $35 million for his space odyssey, landed back on Earth Sunday.)
Barbara Barrett has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. She was the first civilian woman to land an F/A-18 Hornet on an aircraft carrier. Earlier this year, she wrapped up her stint as U.S. ambassador to Finland. But on this October weekend in Montana, she seemed perfectly content to ride horses (bareback) with her husband, “eat something other than borscht” and mingle with the artists and guests.
Before the Barretts owned Triple Creek, they’d visited many times — as guests.
“It’s like that old Remington commercial: I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company,” joked Craig Barrett, while showing a few of us around the kitchen at Triple Creek’s restaurant. (When they remodeled the kitchen, they added a private chef’s table that can be reserved for an extra $35 a head. Chicago chef Rick Tramonto of Tru suggested the idea.)
Triple Creek’s restaurant makes sure no artists go starving. Hearty breakfasts, lunches and gourmet dinners are included in the overnight rates. Local farms supply much of what’s on the menu. Dessert one night was made from apples harvested from the Barretts’ land. The beef comes from their own cattle.
The couple bought Triple Creek in 1993 and set about upgrading the property and adding a heated pool, tennis court and new cabins. Along the way, they snapped up an additional 25,000 or so acres nearby, putting the Barretts right up there with Ted Turner as some of the largest private land owners in Montana.
The Barretts’ massive tract of land, called CB Ranch, is home to elk, deer, golden eagles and the occasional bear or moose, not to mention stunning views of snow-capped mountain peaks. Even the best artists — or cameras — can’t fully capture this kind of scenery, on this kind of scale.
Triple Creek guests can go to CB Ranch for more horseback riding, cattle drives and, in the not-so-distant future, safari-style nature tours.
“Craig wants all the guests to get out here and see this,” said Triple Creek general manager Bill McConnell, as we drove along CB Ranch’s undulating dirt roads. We’d just put away our binoculars after watching a couple of bucks lock horns and get into a shoving match.
“Triple Creek has all that luxury and comfort ... people sometimes just end up staying there and missing out on all this,” McConnell said, nodding out the window. “This is the real reason you come to Montana.”
Transportation and overnight accommodations for this article were paid for by Triple Creek Ranch.