Brautigan published ``Trout Fishing in America,'' writer Hjortsberg hit it big with ``Falling Angel,'' and McGuane sold his novel ``92 in the Shade'' to Hollywood, launching himself as a popular screenwriter. And each began to load up on Chatham pictures. A born barterer, Chatham swapped his art for firewood and fishing rods, baby-sitting service and airline tickets, medical care and food _ even a handmade afghan. Which explains why a few dozen cowboys and merchants in Livingston now own Chatham originals worth thousands of dollars. Because, after nearly 200 one-man shows which usually lost money, after living on less than $15,000 annually, eked out through sales to friends and free-lance writing, Chatham has made enough in the last two years to stay out of debt with some left over. Today his paintings command up to $60,000, with an average of $10,000 to $30,000 per canvas. ``Now, 28 years after taking up this desperate line of work professionally, it appears the work is fulfilling its function, which is simply to add a measure of interest and dimension to people's lives in an almost subliminal way by inhabiting their walls just as a spirit might inhabit a gloomy stairway,'' writes Chatham in a slim brochure about his work. He has become the artist-of-choice for many of Hollywood's hip and famous. Actor Jack Nicholson reportedly owns 30 Chatham canvases. Other buyers include movie stars Jeff Bridges, Peter Fonda, and Dennis Quaid (all Paradise Valley transplants), Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Ali McGraw, and Harrison Ford. Thus, the supreme irony of Russell Chatham's life is that, having moved away from the hyped-up fast lane of the California art scene where patrons abound, wealthy admirers found him by what he calls ``accident'' when they came to fly-fish and make movies in a small Montana town on the edge of nowhere. As Chatham talks, he paints, neither exercise hampering the other. He is dressed in untied tennis shoes, a rumpled shirt, and oil-splattered pants. He is a big man, barrel-chested, brawny-armed. His eyes are large and liquid, now brown, now gray, depending on the angle of the studio's flat north light. His nose, once described by a friend as a bobsled run, fits sideways on his face. The image is uncannily like a Gauguin self-portrait. It is a silent Sunday. None of the seven employees he now pays to keep track of his growing business are around. He has the entire second floor of a building which also houses Sax & Fryer, a bookstore which has helped Livingstonites find erudition since 1883. Stacked in the hallways are oils, acrylics, and large framed prints from his ``Missouri Headwaters'' series of 12 original lithographs. Most are going to Seattle for two major shows, one at the Davidson Gallery, the other at the Kimzey Miller Gallery, through late November. After years of living on the edge, Chatham at last finds himself riding the crest of a success his admirers say will last the remainder of his life. But for Chatham there is much more to living than just painting. There are his wife, Suzanne, and their 3-year-old daughter, Rebecca. There are new books to write and old ones to re-issue through his new publishing venture, the Livingston-based Clark City Press. There are pickup games of pool to be played with strangers across the street, birds to be hunted with old friends on cold days, fish to be caught. Writing in ``Sports Illustrated'' a few years ago, McGuane told of being in the river and looking up to see Chatham: ``I see my friend and neighbor, a painter, walking along the high cutbank above the river. This would be a man who has ruined his life with sport. He skulks from his home at all hours with gun or rod. Today he has both. ```What are you doing?' ```Trout fishing and duck hunting...As you can see,' says the painter gesticulating strangely, `I'm ready for anything. I spoiled half the day with work and errands.'''
