Biographical Background

Bozeman artist Marsha Karle is a watercolorist and illustrator with a special interest in nature.  Her art reflects her experiences living and working with the National Park Service for many years in some of America’s most dramatic natural settings.  Marsha retired from Yellowstone National Park in 2004 to pursue her interest in art full time. She has had numerous exhibits in the Bozeman area.

Marsha and her husband, Paul Schullery, have collaborated as artist and author on four books, Real Alaska (2001), The Rise (2006), Royal Coachman (2007), and If Fish Could Scream (2008) and are currently working on a book about Glacier National Park scheduled for publication in 2010.

Artist’s Statement

The magic of painting is that I can not only capture the fresh wonder of a moment, but I can also share it with others. Most artists’ attempts to explain the sources of our vision fall short of doing justice to our work; if our words could express the passion we feel for beauty, we wouldn’t have to paint.

In a childhood spent on a California ranch, and an adulthood in the magnificent wild country of Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, I discovered the quiet glory of natural textures: fur or feather, petal or leaf, stem or sandstone.  Each time I paint, I rediscover these wonders anew.

Watercolor, with its capacity for delicacy and translucence, disciplines me to pay attention to the elegant subtleties of light.  As I have witnessed nature from the Far North to New England, from the Ohio Valley to the Pacific Coast, watercolor has compelled me to look harder and more gratefully at the beauty I love than I would have without a brush in my hand.  My paintings celebrate the beauty and wonder of the natural world that surrounds us every day of the year.