Local artist living her dream in the Swan Valley

Over the last few decades, female artists have earned acceptance in almost every part of the United States, as well as in international circles. However, that acceptance represents a victory won through the passion and struggles of those willing to fight for it.

In the 1960's the idea that only male artists could enjoy success in the art world prevailed in art circles throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world, as Jeanette Rehahn discovered early in her career. In fact, that very sentiment delayed her career by 20 years.

Rehahn discovered her penchant for art early in life, while attending church with her mother. To keep her occupied during services, her mother gave her a pencil and a notepad. Seeing a program with a picture of a sheep, one day, she decided to draw her own picture of a sheep on her notepad.

"I've always been an artist at heart," she recalled. "I have never been anything else."

In school, art classes were always Rehahn's favorite. While attending junior high in Rockford, Ill., a neighbor excitedly told her about his being accepted to the Art Institute of Chicago, which kindled a fire in her spirit to try and gain acceptance to the institute for herself.

"I don't know why I knew I had to do this, but I knew I had to do this," she said.

In time, she achieved that goal and studied at the institute for two years. However, the shy young woman was so intimidated she declined to eat lunch for the first six months because her stomach was so nervous during classes.

At once, the institute proved to be a salve and a bitter pill to her tender spirit. She found herself surrounded by like-minded individuals who shared her passion for art, but it was also there she learned the harsh lesson that women were not yet welcome in the art world.

"For the first time, I wasn't different at all," Rehahn said of being around other artists while she attended the institute. "I was like everyone else."

While the classes themselves fed her passion and nurtured the artist within her, some of the lessons she learned served only to crush her and stifle her dreams of pursuing a career in art.

Following the counsel of her teachers that "women marry artists, they don't become artists," she married a grad student at the University of Wisconsin whose area of interest was in sculpture who taught her some valuable lessons about being successful.

"He knew no barriers when it came to going after what he wanted," Rehahn said. "I learned that from being around him. I have noticed that this is the difference between those who can and those who can't, when it comes to making it as an artist. That gave me confidence to assert myself and overcome my shyness."

Even so, Rehahn did not fulfill her dream of being an artist for quite some time. Instead, she went to work for Purdue University, drawing technical illustrations for exhibits, like the structure of cells. Later, in the 1970's she went to work for the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where she continued to work as a technical illustrator until, at the age of 40, she focused on freelancing as a graphic artist, creating flow charts and other graphics for software companies, as well as for lawyers who would use them in jury trials.

"Business got to be good," she said. "In fact, business got to be really good. I knew that if I kept this up I would trap myself into doing it all day, every day, for the rest of my life."

By this time, Rehahn had remarried to her current husband, Mark Evanoff. When she told her husband that she was going to quit her job, he was horrified. Still, he supported her in her endeavor to do something different and five years later, she began working as a gourd artist after several years as an office manager for a landscape architect.

After painting a gourd with a local women's group, she bought a book on the subject and commenced painting hundreds of gourds, which she sold at numerous galleries, including the Kootenai Gallery in Bigfork, where she met and became friends with Elna Darrow in the late 1990's.

After working with gourds for 10 years, she was ready for a change. That change came six years ago, when she picked up the book, "The Poetic Landscape," by Elizabeth Mowry, and instantly knew she wanted to paint pastel landscapes.

"Painting landscapes with pastels is the first thing in my life that I feel like, if I could live another 100 years, I would never get tired of. When I really discovered and became enamored with the Swan Valley, I just could not believe the colors and the beauty. I knew this was what I wanted to paint."

Through her friendship will Darrow, Rehahn had become enamored with the Flathead and had already begun spending her summers by the Lake. She and Mark have lived in the Flathead as permanent residents for five years and in the Swan Valley for the last three.

Rehahn saw the opening of her exhibit, "Wandering Through the Swan" on Friday, June 5, which will continue through Saturday, June 27. All of her pastel landscapes of the Swan Valley are currently on display as part of the exhibit.

Rehahn describes her work as an emotional experience that is long overdue — one made even more special by the fact that she is now validating the gift she was once told she could never embrace.

"They said I couldn't, so I did," she says. "I can't tell you how good that feels."