A Conversation with Artist Hadley Rampton
Hadley Rampton, winner of the Jury’s Choice Award at the High Desert Museum’s 2018 Art in the West exhibition for her work “Vista,” blends her love of the outdoors with her passion for art through plein air painting. Born in Salt Lake City in 1975, Rampton grew up exploring the Utah wilderness and the Teton/Yellowstone area, a place she has always loved and continues to wander today, along with her trusty Border Collie, Phoebe, who plays while the artist paints. Find her online at hadleyrampton.com
When did you know you wanted to be an artist and what influenced that path?
I’m one of those who can’t remember when I wasn’t creating art — drawing or painting. As a little girl I loved creating art, mostly drawing. When I was 9, seeing this interest of mine, my mother put me in art classes outside of regular school — at the Visual Art Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah. With that, I was able to begin oil painting and figure drawing by the time I was 12, and I just loved working with more professional and advanced media. I loved it so much so I would just do it. It made me happy. And I was always interested in drawing accurately, drawing from life. I would actually be jealous of those kids who were drawing more from imagination. Even though I could draw more accurately, I was jealous because I didn’t have quite the imagination that they did.
Where do you find your ideas and inspiration for your pieces?
I love being outside. For me it’s these two loves and being able to combine these two things. I definitely do the majority of my work outside. It can get difficult, but I love the feeling of the elements around me, it energizes me. Maybe that is why my colors tend to be a bit more intense, and also my brush strokes and with my palette knife … I tend to just put down the color and then the next color and not labor over it too much. Being outside, because the light is changing and everything is moving and there’s all this energy around me, I can’t fuss over things. Being outside also allows me to really focus. Up in the mountains by myself, out in nature, that’s it. I’m there. I’m painting. I’m not doing anything else. There is nothing else to distract me.
Do each of your pieces represent specific places or landscapes?
I love to explore. If I wasn’t an artist I would be an explorer. Most of the places I paint I have been to many times, they’re places around where I live — mainly in the Northern Utah mountain ranges, Southern Utah, the Tetons and into Idaho, but I’ve never been south of Utah painting. When I am in a new place, I’m not sure what I’ll be painting. I just head out and look for things that really strike me. I love to venture into new territory, but also to revisit old territory and look at it in different ways and maybe from a different angle or with a different perspective.
I’ve come to love painting aspen trees. I have taken a bit more of a still life approach in a way because I am really thinking of the subtleties of composition and placement on the canvas. It’s a different thing than when I paint a distant landscape … the way the trunk curves, especially in the white, the shadows, the various colors that emerge, I emphasize those. I investigate that on much more of an intense level.
With the more distant landscape pieces, the location becomes more relevant. I always paint from life, but I am not too worried about making my paintings look exactly as the scene looks. I love letting what I’m feeling play a role, and because I work quickly there is a lot of gesture in the work, so things aren’t exact and that’s okay. In some ways, I hope that by working that way the feeling of the place comes through even more, much like a gesture drawing of a person — it may not be anatomically accurate, but it can convey the personality and the feeling of that person.
Do you still paint people?
For the longest time that is what I loved most. Through college I painted and drew the human figure quite a lot. Now I’ll go to a coffee shop and I’ll sketch the people as they’re moving, again carrying on with that immediacy and going with the gesture. When I travel overseas and take my watercolors, I paint street scenes and the people … just as I’m wandering, the scenes that I come upon. It’s like how I work here — just exploring and coming upon something that captures my desire to paint. It’s a different subject when I’m traveling overseas, but it’s that same sort of philosophy.
Do you consider yourself a historian, capturing time through your art?
I love history, and I think that’s especially true with the painting during the travels I do overseas. Where I go, what I see … I am generally always thinking about history and wanting to learn more by being there. With my paintings, especially of street scenes, I am really drawn to wear and tear where you can feel the history and the passage of time rather than everything being perfect. It’s also culture that I love to capture. At one point I had the privilege of being in Istanbul, and talk about history! I was able to paint these mosques and the Hagia Sophia, and the fun of it was there’d be a woman in a full burka and another woman in complete Western dress — shorts and a tank top. That’s the culture of Istanbul, they have this incredible history and then they have the whole Muslim component and then it’s also modern. I love capturing things like that, that tell, through visual means, a story, that tells so much about the place.
What are some of the most unique or noteworthy places you’ve been able to capture with your paintbrush?
It’s actually hard for me to rank places because even the places that I’ve gone that aren’t that far off the map have been incredible. I tend to be drawn to wandering and coming upon things. So even in a place that is more familiar, such as Paris, I find little moments that might be surprising. And the same is true for landscapes. I’ve painted iconic places like the Tetons, but then also have had the opportunity to venture down into the back areas that are not as known.
Do you always work with the same color palette?
My palette is very limited, so I do a lot of mixing. I have a blue, a version of red, a brown, a yellow and a white, no black, and from there I mix. Through the seasons, the color palette of the painting changes even though I’m working with the same paint colors. Then of course it varies from when I’m working in southern Utah in the redrock desert versus more northern alpine environment. So I do respond to the colors around me in real life, but sometimes it’s much more vibrant than what it really is, and other times it’s accurate to what it is. When I’m painting, I’m not really thinking about it, it’s just happening.
Congratulations on your Jury’s Choice Award for this year’s Art in the West exhibition. What inspired “Vista,” what does the piece represent and what was the process of creation?
“Vista” — that piece is painted in the Park City area near Salt Lake in a spot I had not painted before. I had felt like doing something with a bit more distance. It was the beginning or middle of March so there was still some snow in the upper mountains, but there was also the wonderful warm hues that emerge when the snow melts. I found it while driving in the area — I just pulled over and it felt right so I set things up. With that one, I returned to the same place at the same time of day for several hours over a period of several days. It has a stylized, abstract feel to it. As I painted, I began loving the patterns and colors that were emerging. It was such a different piece. When that happens, when I paint a piece that is so different, just like anything at first, I’m not sure how I feel about it. But with this one, I came to really love it!
How has your art evolved?
For many years it was me yearning to draw accurately, but then ironically by the time I got to college I was inspired by the loose manner in which I saw others painting and drawing. I wanted to be more emotional, to let it go so that what happens happens. That is where I am now, and it is much more fun for me to be loose and let the emotion enter.
How do you know when you’re finished with a piece?
It’s hard to explain, but when it’s done it’s done. It’s a feeling, that last stroke, and I step back and just know.
Andy Taylor
- loans to the embassies in Kingston, Jamaica; Nouakchott, Mauritania; Lisbon, Portugal
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
- Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, CO, 1990 and 1993
- born 1949, West Chester, Pennsylvania
- resident, Carbondale, Colorado, 1975 — present
- Colorado College, 1971, BA cum laude
- manager, Mountain Blue Turf Farm, 1977 – 2014
- President, Board of Directors, Mount Sopris Nordic Council, 1996 – 2010
- member, Carbondale Comprehensive Plan Working Group, 2011 – 2012
- member, Board of Adjustments, Town of Carbondale, 1990 – 2005
- member, Board of Directors, Carbondale Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1987 – 1990
For almost forty years I have lived in Carbondale, Colorado. Most of my art world exists within a day’s drive: the 250 miles to the north, south and west, across the Colorado Plateau, with its spectacular canyons, high plains, distant mesas, skinny rivers, and infrequent trees and sundry shrubbery. I love it: the colors, the shapes, the weather, and the occasional place where water changes everything.
For me painting is about exploration and discovery: exploring different ways of seeing or different ways of expressing what I see and discovering what I want to paint and discovering things as I paint. And, if successful, the result is hopefully an engaging visual treat.
Future Shows:
- Ann Korologos Gallery, October 2018
- Ann Korologos Gallery, 2013, 2014, and 2017
- A Gallery, May 2012
- Carbondale Council on Arts & Humanities, July 2010
- Basalt Gallery, Basalt, CO 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08 and 2009
- Western Colorado Center for the Arts, Grand Junction, CO, 1992
- Kyle Belding Gallery, Denver, CO 87, 88, 89, and 1991
- Sebastian-Moore Gallery, Denver, CO Letz and Shore , 1983
2018 Coors Western Art Exhibit, National Western Club Artist
Art for the Sangres
- 2017 Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale, National Western Club Artist Fine Art Connoisseur Award — Young Guns
- 2017 Colorado Showcase, PACE
- 2016 Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale, National Western Club Artist
- Best of the West, Ann Korologos Gallery
- 2015 Coors Western Art Exhibit and Sale National Western Club Artist
- Out of the West, Ann Korologos Gallery
- 2014 Close to Home Colorado Mountain College, Rifle Campus
- 2013 Green, A Gallery
- Works on Paper, Ann Korologos Gallery
- 2012
5 Points Film Festival Art Show, Carbondale
Valley Visual Arts Show, Carbondale Council on Arts and Humanities, Carbondale - 2011 Ann Korologos Gallery
- 2010 Ann Korologos Gallery
- 2002 Five Rivers , Glenwood Springs Center for Arts, juried, Diane Vanderlip, First Place
- 1993
Cheekwood National Contemporary Painting Competition, finalist, Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN
Artists of the West, Pioneer Museum, Colorado Springs, CO - 1990 Biennial 90, Loveland Museum, Loveland, CO
- 1988 The Roaring Fork Juried Exhibition, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
- 1987 Roaring Fork Annual, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
- 1986
Inside Out, Kyle Belding Gallery, Denver, CO
Small Wonders, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO - 1985 Artists of the Roaring Fork Valley, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
- 1983 Of, On, or About Paper – II , USA Today, Arlington, VA
- 1981 Seventh Colorado Annual, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
- 1980 Inside — Outside, Boulder Center for Visual Arts, Boulder, CO
- 1979
Interiors, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO (one-person)
First National Small Painting Exhibition, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL
National Painting Show 1979, Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, PA
Strains of Realism, Sebastian-Moore Gallery, Denver, CO - 1978
Works on Paper, University of Portland, Portland, OR
42nd Annual Midyear Show, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Marietta National, Marietta College, Marietta, OH - 1977
Arizona National, Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ
An Aspen Group Show, Gargoyle Gallery, Aspen, CO
Opening Exhibition, Sebastian-Moore Gallery, Denver, CO
41st Annual Midyear Show, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Roaring Fork Valley Art Show, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
Four Corners States Biennial 77, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ - 1974
Paintings Biennial, a traveling group show sponsored by the Arizona Commission on the Arts and Humanities: Arizona Western College, Yuma — Mesa Community College, Mesa — Scottsdale Public Library, Scottsdale — Pima College, Pima - 1973 Second Four Corners States Biennial of Painting and Sculpture, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
