Missoula painter Stephanie Frostad's visions of 'Sustenance'

Her first solo exhibition at Radius Gallery includes various types of work that all come together under the title theme, made starting in 2023 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I became more interested in our sustenance both in terms of food and what we do to keep the abundance available and healthy for us, but also the things that sustain us spiritually, and among those things are our human relationships, a sense of belonging, reveling in the beauty of the place and nature, and our literature,” she said.

The show includes paintings of rural scenes and labor in the Western landscape, two series that depict women holding tools (in a wide sense of the word), and drawings that show how the sketches inform her paintings.

When the war first broke out, she admits she knew little about Ukraine or its status as a major grain supplier for other continents. Thoughts of the country inform a piece that might feel distinctly Western at first.

In “Troubled Harvest II,” a woman stands in a golden wheat field against a blue sky, an allusion to Ukraine’s flag, she said. The figure holds a metal tub of greens in a very subtle allusion to the cabbage roll, a staple item. She’s gazing at the blue skyline, with a cloud gathering in the distance, an allusion to a grass fire or perhaps a battle. Two “hawks of war” circle as well.

Her latest solo exhibition, “Sustenance,” is on view through May 11 at Radius.

Frostad, who grew up in Walla Walla, Washington, is still visibly tied to the Northwest in her subject matter, but her technique was honed outside the region. She studied in Florence, Italy, and at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore before earning her MFA at the University of Montana.

Here in town, she’s exhibited widely over the years, including a solo show, “The Evocative Moment,” at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture in 2019. She’s also a member of the Pattee Canyon Ladies Salon, a long-running collective of women artists dedicated to regular figure drawing sessions and group exhibitions.

Even those who may not be regulars in galleries and museums may have seen her work. She led a mural project with Willard Alternative High School students on the Bitterroot Spur Trail — it’s 120 feet long, so there’s time to take notice even on a bicycle, or the mural for the Montana Natural History Center.

Telling stories

The show includes several different series of broad styles she’s worked in, although her medium is distinct. She paints with oil and graphite on panel, which lends her surfaces a smooth finish.

The “Hands On” series she started in 2016 continues. Seen in profile, a woman’s hand holding a tool of some kind, such as farm implements, domestic labor, eventually paint brushes. Now they're seen with books, in a series of 10 small panels. The palette, intended to signal the pleasure of reading, mimics a rainbow, with red, yellow, green, blue and purple.

She was thinking of books as a tool, and what role they play in shaping “our capacity for empathy and the opening of our imagination.”

The books tie in with her sense of visual storytelling you see elsewhere, and also her way of approaching it.

Retaining ambiguity is important but finding the right amount is “the most amazing creative challenge probably any of us face in storytelling,” she said.

Some people have asked her about adding titles to the books, which she’s left unlabeled so the viewer fills it in rather than pointing directly to an existing work.

After painting “Troubled Harvest,” she began exploring landscapes without people. “Defigured,” as she called it, or “disfigured.”

One such piece, “Trampled Wheat,” leads the viewer's eye up a hillside. The grain has been flattened as it approaches a stand of trees with storm clouds looming. There are signs of people but what exactly is going on isn’t spelled out.

“Is there a brigade of soldiers resting in there, is there a homestead disintegrating in this old copse?” she said.

In another painting, “Simmering,” two women stand over a white stove with a large pot that’s boiling. Their gazes are fixed and focused, but there are no signifiers of what they’re cooking.

“Where do you draw that line between evoking a story and illustrating it, so that you could only come away with one possible interpretation? And that's where the fun is,” she said.

“I think that’s how we stay healthy as artists, is by revisiting them, not decided once,” she said.

Radius co-owner Jason Neal said her work “feeds a lot of different interpretations, which is one of the virtues.” 

The exhibition includes drawings, an important part of her method. She enlists friends and acquaintances as live models. You can see two sketches of a woman in profile, but in different clothing. A composite of those two ended up in a diptych, “Nature & Nurture,” set out on a homestead.

Drawing from life feeds into the skills required for other scenes, such as “Autumn Pressing,” in which two adults and a youth operate an old-fashioned cider press on a farm. It originated with photographs taken years back when a neighbor mentioned they were doing one last batch before retiring their aging equipment. She took photographs and later translated and augmented a visually busy scene into one from a different time period.

There are multiple versions of a simple one-point perspective looking up a hillside, with variations on the palette and even the way a path might lead the eye through the composition.

“Even those fundamental choices you make that shape your vision, your approaches in the scope of imagery, they need to be tested … and fussed with, so that they stay fresh and there’s a chance for evolution,” she said.

Frostad has had two prior shows at Radius with ceramic artist Julia Galloway.

Neal, the gallery co-owner, said Frostad “exemplifies the work ethic of an artist in that she shaped her life around her art practice.”

After a decade of owning a gallery, he said he’s still impressed with the ethic that artists have, one that might not always be obvious to viewers. It’s “real work,” which can be hard on the body and much of it might not be glamorous. A field of wheat can be calming to look at, but painting it blade by blade with deadlines looming is different.

Labor and its value are recurring themes, and challenge viewers to see it not as a means to a financial goal but personal betterment and “a means to connect with other people, and to a community and maybe with the natural world,” he said.

He sees it in her images, regardless of the subject — even the ones with remnants of a story, a field that’s been tended, or cut with a path from a wagon.

“Even in her paintings that don't have people in them, you can almost always see evidence of work done,” he said.