Kelsey Dzintars: Micro Landscapes
Spring 2025 Artist-in-Residence at Castle Butte Lookout with Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation
Kelsey Dzintars, Artist-in-Residence, with her dog Neko
Describe your Open AIR Residency experience.
I went into my residency unsure of what I would create, with the intention of holding space for whatever I might find inspiring without any preconceived notions. After initially attempting to paint sweeping landscapes, I found myself drawn instead to the small, intricate ecosystems beneath my feet, painting “micro landscapes” that revealed entire worlds within the high alpine meadows.
Snow in summer: inspired by a high alpine meadow
My days were a rhythm of reading, meditating, hiking, and painting in the fire lookout, where solitude and stillness reshaped my pace and attention. The experience deepened my sense of collaboration with the land and continues to influence how I see and translate the natural world in my work.
My four weeks at the Castle Butte Lookout were inspiring and challenging, ultimately deepening my trust in myself and rekindling my connection to what really drives me to make art.
Kelsey enjoying the views of Lochsa Canyon
What role does place play in your work, especially during your time at Open AIR?
Place is really at the center of my work. Most of my paintings are inspired by my own experiences moving through the wilderness, depicting landscapes, flora, and fauna that strike me, sometimes in a directly representational way, and other times capturing the emotional or ethereal feeling the subject evokes.
I’m drawn to translating not just how a place looks, but how it feels and how it connects us to the land, its creatures, and each other. Even in remote areas, there’s a sense of community between all who inhabit and care for it. My time at the lookout deepened this sense of oneness with the natural world, living within it, moving with it, in quiet community with it, rather than standing apart.
Acrylic study of mountain lupine
What goal or mission drives your creative journey?
My main goal as an artist is to foster connection. I want people to feel a sense of resonance with the work that I create, a feeling of being seen and understood. That can happen through a painting, a tattoo, or a mural. It’s about highlighting our shared humanness and our bond with the natural world. From there, conservation naturally follows.
By deepening that connection, I hope my work encourages care and stewardship for the landscapes and ecosystems that inspire me. I often collaborate with conservation organizations, creating pieces that raise awareness about specific causes or help contribute to fundraising initiatives.
Wilderness getaway: Day trip to go paint riverside and take a dip in the Lochsa
What's a lesson you had to unlearn?
Not so much a lesson, but a habitual mindset I’ve had to unlearn is the idea that productivity defines the value of my work. Throughout my career I’ve gotten caught up in saying ‘yes’ to everything, taking on lots of commissions to make a living. I got in a place in which I felt I always needed to be producing something that was sellable, rather than creating from curiosity and allowing the work to be an experiment or a so-called ‘failure.’
My time in the Lookout helped me step back, slow down, and focus on painting for painting’s sake, which I have not carved out the time to do in a long time. I’m still working on finding that balance, but the residency experience reminded me that presence, observation, and letting ideas emerge naturally are just as important as output.
A page from Kelsey’s sketchbook, imagining flying above the ridgelines
This interview has been edited slightly for clarity.
