Sandy Ingersoll

Hometown: Stevensville, Montana
Major medium: pen & ink, oils
Art background: studied with O.C. Seltzer

Cyrus Vinten "Sandy" Ingersoll was born October 30, 1908 at Canyon Ferry, Montana. Growing up in the cowboy country of frontier Montana was a formative experience for Sandy, who worked on his father's stage line year round, meeting people of all walks of life.

The Ingersoll family moved to the Bitterroot Valley when Sandy was ten, and he would go on to graduate from Florence High School.

He married Lola James on October 30, 1929 in Hamilton, working as a ranch hand all over the valley before buying his own ranch in the Three Mile area.

Sandy's early art training was undertaken by means of correspondence courses, and later he had the chance to study with Olaf Seltzer, who had been an understudy of the legendary Charlie Russel. It was Seltzer who instilled in Sandy his artistic styles and the theory that all paintings should be finished painstakingly – filled with color and content to the corners.

History and the Western lifestyle always figured importantly into Sandy's art, and he painted from his own experience as a true Montana cowboy. He was prolific and constantly producing work, even until the last years of his life. Sandy passed away in 1989, but the town of Stevensville and the many students and followers he had across Western Montana will always remember him as a vital part of regional artistic identity.

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Sacajawea Gallery - 301 Main st. Stevensville, MT 59870 - (406) 777-3806