Ronan student returns from year at arts school
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RONAN – What’s the first thing an artist does when they see their family after spending their senior year of high school more than 2,700 miles from home?
Show off their new work, of course. During a recent happy reunion with his family, 18-year-old artist Alex Greenfield was more eager to show off his new paintings than enter the Cracker Barrel in Missoula to sit down for a meal.
“It was very exciting when he came home,” mother Aimee Greenfield said. “He brought out his paintings in the parking lot and sat them around the car.”
What Aimee saw was her son’s most beautiful work yet. On Sunday, July 17, Alex put his work on display for an afternoon art showing at the Red Poppy in Ronan. Interested community members and family came out to see Greenfield’s latest paintings.
According to Aimee, it was obvious by the age of two that her son was born to be a painter. The toddler raided his brother’s science kit materials to paint a mural on the dining room wall.
“When I saw that I thought, oh my, here’s our little artist,” Aimee said.
“My whole life I’ve been drawing or sketching,” Alex admits. “I just got more serious with my paintings.”
From St. Ignatius, Alex attended Ronan High School through his junior year, before receiving an offer to spend his final year at Booker High School Visual and Performing Arts in Sarasota, Fla., where he took his natural talent and learned how to “build” a picture by using balance, contrast, tones, subjects and perspectives. According to Alex, the specialized schooling has helped shape him into one of the top young painters in the United States, and a top student at his new school.
“The teachers at Booker were really impressed by him,” Aimee said. “They said only one other student in the history of the school was as talented as him.”
Paintings take Alex anywhere from a day to more than three months to complete, depending on the piece. His prize painting is a large portrait of his mother and father.
“It took hundreds of hours to get it done,” Alex said. “It was definitely tedious.”
The young artist says it’s much easier to find a place to paint a landscape back home in the Mission Valley than it is in Florida.
“In Florida I would spend a day trying to find a place to paint, while out here I can walk out my door,” Alex said. “Montana is one of the most gorgeous states.”
During a gallery show where art students show their portfolios to the top universities in the nation, Greenfield was told by a viewer that he was the “best I’ve seen.” Once he became desired by multiple universities, a bidding war ensued between competing schools, most notably between the Chicago Museum of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass.
“The dean of admissions from Boston called and he really wanted him,” Aimee said. “But we didn’t have the money to send him there.”
With the bidding war in full swing, the dean at SMFA made Alex a deal he couldn’t refuse.
“He gave him more money, so he’d go to Boston,” Aimee said with a smile.
Once at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Alex plans to major in painting and minor in photography, beginning this fall.
Although Amy has already spent a year apart from her son, she says it’s still difficult to think of him moving away again.
“It’s very scary for me,” Aimee said. “(And) it’s scary for him to leave, he likes the Montana mentality.”
As Alex continues to grow as a young artist, he has set goals for himself down the road.
“I want to focus on a concept to make people find out in a painting what I’m trying to say, while allowing them to interpret it in their own way,” Greenfield said.
Greenfield also wants to eventually have the skill to paint the perfect picture, as he takes time to look at famous painters' work to see if he can find what others didn’t do well.
“I look at Picasso and Matisse and I can’t find any mistakes,” he said. “I want to be able to paint everything perfect.”
