Charlie Russell country = the prairie east of Great Falls (Big Sandy, Square Butte, Sun River). Frame as wide horizon, sage and cottonwood
— — the country Charlie Russell kept painting his whole life.
Not only on a wall.
“East of Great Falls the land opens up. Sage, cottonwood along the Sun and Missouri, two-lane roads running straight at the horizon, and Square Butte standing out alone on the skyline forty miles north toward Big Sandy. Charlie Russell painted this country for forty years and never tired of it. The light is long. The wind carries. Nothing is hidden.
Charlie Russell country = the prairie east of Great Falls (Big Sandy, Square Butte, Sun River). Frame as wide horizon, sage and cottonwood, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The country east of Great Falls runs from the Missouri and Sun River bottoms out across the high plains of Cascade and Chouteau Counties. Highway 87 carries you up through the small towns of Fort Benton, Big Sandy, and Square Butte. The landmark Square Butte rises about 1,000 feet above the surrounding plain in Chouteau County, roughly 50 miles northeast of Great Falls. The painter Charles Marion Russell, who lived in Great Falls from 1897 until his death in 1926, rode and painted this ground his entire working life.
The plains here sit between 3,000 and 3,500 feet. The horizon is unbroken in most directions, and weather you can see coming from forty miles out. Sage covers the flats; cottonwoods follow the river bottoms in long green lines. In summer the wind runs steady from the southwest off the Rocky Mountain Front. In winter the chinook comes down off the front and can lift the temperature thirty degrees in an hour. Russell painted this air as much as he painted the land.
Spring greens the prairie for about six weeks beginning in late April. Wildflowers bloom hard in May and early June. Summer is hot and dry, with afternoon thunderheads building over the Highwood and Bears Paw Mountains. Fall cottonwoods turn yellow along the Missouri and the Sun in late September and the first week of October. Winter is long; snow holds on the buttes into May. The light is best in the hour before sunset, when Square Butte casts a shadow you can see from Fort Benton.