On the Banks

A Western collection curated by a young collector is brimming with beauty on the banks of the Milk River in Montana.

Among the treasurers in Anna Rose Sullivan’s growing art collection are paintings by Jeremy Lipking and a drawing of his that was a study for his painting Enchanted Depths, 2011. She was Lipking’s model. At the time, she was earning money modeling to fund “an epic solo road trip along Highway 101 in California,” she explains. “I was totally broke and slept in my car, sneaking into camps after dark and leaving at dawn. During the day I would paddle out past the breakers on a shortboard I bought off Craigslist and proceeded to really suck at surfing.”

Today the Glasgow, Montana, city attorney lives on an 84-acre farm on the banks of the Milk River, which joins the Missouri River just downstream. She found the buffalo and elk skulls that share space with the paintings in her collection along the Missouri when she was chief public defender for the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes in the region. “I wanted to work for a tribal entity,” she explains. “I was interested in working on crimes against women and domestic violence. When I was living there I would often go to the river and walk for miles, or lay out a blanket and sunbathe on the sandy banks. The Missouri River is not to be trifled with, so I would only swim in shallow areas where I could see the bottom.”

She grew up around art. Her mother is Janet L. Sullivan, a pastel artist who is a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America and has shown in major exhibitions including

The Russell Exhibition & Sale at C.M. Russell Museum and the Out West Art Show and Sale. Anna Rose would help her set up and then take off to look at art and talk with artists.

“I seem to have collected mostly Montana artists and mostly women artists,” Anna Rose relates. “Their work speaks to me because I’m a woman in Montana. I identify with the woman with the rifle in Todd Connor’s painting Holding On. I had chickens and processed sheep and feel like a frontier woman. I lease some of the land for grazing cows. There is little light pollution and you can see the stars in all their glory. An area by the river is a sort of nursery for whitetailed deer.” The river was given its name by Meriwether Lewis, who wrote, “the water of this river possesses a peculiar whiteness, being about the colour of a cup of tea with the admixture of a tablespoonfull of milk. From the color of its water we called it Milk river.”

One of her treasured possessions is a bowl made by her friend Katie Busch who is co-owner of CK Productions, which processes

fossils “from prospecting to mounted exhibits.” When they were talking one day about dinosaurs evolving into birds Anna Rose suggested they raise emus. “I purchased an incubator and Katie took charge and did everything else,” she relates. “She is now the mother of two huge, healthy emu dinosaurs.”

Anna Rose says, “People come to Montana to go to Glacier National Park and Yellowstone and are surrounded by beauty. Beauty is an easy meditation. People are often enraptured by a sunset or sunrise. They instinctually take a pause that naturally elicits all these emotions in us as compared to breath control in a formal meditation setting. It’s something that happens if you’re willing to look with your eyes. It triggers a sense of peace.”

Speaking of her collection, she explains, “I’ve seen lots of art in my life. If I see something that speaks to me, it doesn’t matter what the subject is. I look for something that makes me stop to spend time looking at it. I look for color and composition ... just good art.

“Everywhere I go I look for art that I like,” she continues. “I don’t usually hesitate. I think if you love a piece, get it rather than regret later that you didn’t. Talk to the artists to learn why they made that particular piece.”

She travels to auctions and exhibitions because “there aren’t a lot of artistic outlets up here. There is a gallery in Glasgow and there is a brewery in Wolf Point where I’ve bought art. I’ve never had a shortage of great original art in my life. I’m uncomfortable if there isn’t art around me. There’s an absence, a sense of something missing. It’s part of who I am.

“Sometimes in the winter—which seems to go on forever—it’s a blessing to have a comfortable environment to hunker down in, to have a fire and to look at my art. It’s enriching,” she says. “I think someday I may make this a retreat for artists. I have a number of empty bedrooms and it would nice to have artists come to stay. The nearest neighbor is a mile away. There are the deer, song birds, pheasant, beaver, the grove of old cottonwoods by the river. There’s not getting away from nature.”

The collector was the model for this Jeremy Lipking oil. The hand-painted glass lamp is from an antique store on the High Line.

On the left is Loren Kovich’s watercolor White Roses. On the top shelf is a bowl by Katie Busch. Behind it is Janet L. Sullivan’s watercolor Bitterroots. On the middle shelf are the collector’s acrylic pour on canvas Agate, and Betty Jean Billups’ oil on porcelain Bison. On the bottom shelf are, left to right, Colt Idol’s Sunset’s Performance and Vicki Lee Johnson’s mixed media The Drive…the cattle. The skulls were found by the collector along the Missouri River. On the mantle is Mia Delode’s oil Mountain Lion.

Janet L. Sullivan is the collector’s mother. Two of Sullivan's pastels hang on the left and, to the right, is one of her acrylics.

Hanging above a chair and footstool that belonged to the collector’s great-grandmother are—top row, left to right—cathryn Reitler Mcintyre’s acrylic painting on a rusted percolator cap, Shirley Anderson Sylvester’s watercolor Stevensville Grist Mill, Margaret Graziano’s oil My Retreat, Todd Connor’s Holding On, Bonnie Griffith’s oil Grain Silo and Karen A. Young’s oil Yellow Rose. On the bottom row are, left to right, Trish Stevenson’s oil portrait of a cow, Mia Delode’s oil Cow, Elizabeth Robbins’ oil Red Roses, Betty Jean Billups’ oil Flowers, Kwani Povi Winder’s (Santa Clara) oil Lily and, beneath it, Young’s oil Grey Heron.

On the left is Janet L. Sullivan’s pastel Smokey Morning. To the left of the door are, top to bottom, Rosemary Millette’s print Approaching Storm and a photograph of bison by an unknown photographer dated May 11, 1920.

On the table are Mia Delode’s oil Bison Herd and a photograph of Yellowstone Park by F. Jay Haynes (1853-1921).