Artist’s real life subject comes to museum
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CHARLO – It isn’t everyone who can find a painting of themselves as a small child on greeting cards in stores, but Denika Edmo, 11, is so used to it that it doesn’t surprise her anymore.
“I’ve walked into the grocery store and there is me,” she said.
Since the age of 4, Denika has been the subject for almost a dozen paintings by artist Karen Noles, and many of them were developed into greeting cards. Denika’s favorite painting is of her holding a baby bobcat, and she also likes the one where she is petting a donkey. She is wearing traditional beaded buckskin dresses in both paintings to create a traditional atmosphere.
“I remember I was happy because I got to hold the baby kitten,” she said of the painting with a bobcat on her shoulder.
Noles spotted Denika dancing at a powwow. Denika often dances in the fancy dance style wearing traditional dresses.
“I also like to shawl dance,” she said.
Guest artist Noles featured a painting with Denika petting a horse at the Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana during the First Saturday event, where the artist and the model came together to reminisce.
“She is beautiful now and she was an adorable little girl,” Noles said sitting next to Denika during the exhibit.
Charlo resident Rita Senkler also reunited with Denika at the museum.
Senkler first met Denika when Senkler lived at Providence St. Joseph Retirement Center. At the time, Senkler didn’t know Denika’s affiliation with Karen Noles, yet she recognized a special quality about the young girl.
“It was a inner spark of beauty and creativity that manifested itself almost immediately during our very first encounter,” Senkler said. “It took visible shape in not only musical inquisitivity, but her natural artistic ability to create a beautiful poinsettia for me and to begin to write a short story which was to be about me, an old lady, named ‘Pollyanna.’”
Senkler has since moved back home, but was able to see Noles’ paintings at the First Saturday event.
Noles moved to the Polson area 40 years ago as a beginning artist with a portfolio full of published work from a big name card company using a paint she explained as gouache, which is like watercolor. She continued experimenting until she fell in love with oils. She used the medium to develop a style she calls classical realism. Her subject matter also changed.
“Now, I focus on earlier western heritage,” she said. “My primary focus has been on native women and children. In the western art market, the male perspective is much more represented than women and children. I think the softer more feminine side of western art needs to be portrayed.”
Her desire to paint the softer side of history began after she noticed a violent theme in western art.
“I don’t want to paint violence. There were happy, beautiful people in those days,” Noles said. “The beadwork was just beautiful. I decided I wanted to paint beautiful women and children.”
Over the years, Noles has shifted from painting primarily for greeting cards to more portrait work, but her peaceful focus has continued.
“Children are my favorite subjects,” she said. “It’s the spontaneous way they react to life. There is a sweetness about them, like with Denika. When I put her with the horses, her reaction was just so sweet and natural. It was beautiful. That is what I love about kids.”
Noles is one of the artists featured by the museum this summer in their First Saturday series.
“We are amazed by some of the local talent,” said Laurel Cheff, museum administrator. “We wanted to showcase local artists and give them an opportunity to meet tourists to get more people interested in their work.”
An artist will be featured at the museum during the first Saturday of the month through September.
