Gennie DeWeese, Modern Artist

Gennie with two dogs named Pepper, one real and one in oil. Bozeman Chronicle.

Nominator:

Christofer Autio

Who is my bold woman?

Gennie DeWeese

Where and when did she live?

Gennie lived from 1921 to 2007. Seventy of those years were in Bozeman, Montana.

What did she do?

Gennie worked throughout her life as an oil painter, venturing into abstract expressionism and using large hanging canvasses later in life. She and her husband Bob DeWeese moved to Bozeman from Ohio in 1949, and Bob taught art at MSU. Both were important in the Bozeman art community and in the development of contemporary art in Montana. In 1995, with her by then late husband, Gennie received the Montana Governor's Award for the Arts and was also awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts from MSU. Gennie and Bob raised three daughters and two sons, who went on to become teachers and artists and to work in civil rights.

What does she mean to me?

My parents were, likewise, Montana artists, and our families were intertwined. When I first went to Bozeman for college, Gennie and Bob were kind surrogate parents to me, a great source of comfort away from college life. Around their dining table, art was always a topic: who was having an exhibit where; music and aesthetics; all the nebulous perambulations and controversy in the art world; and mainly, making art. In his 1974 bestseller “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert Pirsig describes Gennie and the DeWeese household. Pirsig was a friend and visited often.

The respect and love I have for Gennie, such a giver of gifts, is timeless.