Gary Schidt grew up on a ranch on the
Blackfeet Indian Reservation. He says,
“This ranch became my sanctuary and it is where I began an odyssey
of childhood adventures and dreams. The web of relationships forms a
connection to the people, the animals and the land. It provides a deep
well of life experiences which, literally, I drew from.”
Mr. Schildt is a sculptor and painter, who works primarily
in oil and watercolor. He works with a variety of subjects form Plein
Air paintings and his Early Reservation Series to sculptures and Lewis
and Clark, and the Huckleberry Finn Characters. His work embodies impressionistic
paintings and sculpture of Indian life and Western American as well
as subject from Europe and Mexico.
A member of the Blackfeet Tribe, Schildt was educated
at City College of San Francisco and the San Francisco Academy of Fine
Art. He was a charter member of the Northwest Rendezvous of Art and
a member of the Plein Air and Oil Painters of America. His work is in
the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution and has been
shown at the Museum of Native American Cultures and the National Indian
Art Show. He has had solo exhibits at the Montana Historical Society,
where his work in also on permanent display, the C.M. Russell Gallery,
and in numerous galleries nationwide.
From 1995 to 1997, Gary worked on the Blackfeet Sundance
Series consisting of 42 large paintings chronicling the Medicine Lodge
Ceremony or Okan of the Blackfeet Tribe. The exhibit traveled to museums
across Montana throughout 1998. The paintings will remain as a permanent
collection in the new wing at the C.M. Russell Museum beginning in March
2001.