He walked into the bar with a swagger exuding confidence. On his head, he wore a hat reminiscent of the 1940’s, and, the thing was, he pulled it off. He had just finished a long day — nine hours — of painting, and had come back for a nightcap or two. He is Noah Ptolemy, who worked long days to complete a commissioned mural in the hallway at the newly opened Badlander Bar in the historic Hotel Palace building in Missoula, Montana. Over the course of the week, I would watch Ptolemy as he worked tirelessly on the playful expanse that includes a parade of red elephants amid a green sea filled with yellow sailboats.

Over the course of the past year or so, Ptolemy is coming into his own in the Missoula art community. The 26 year old is well traveled, having done time in big cities like New York, Detroit and Seattle, even making it as far as Japan in a search to fill a hole in his life. It was in Detroit that he initially began to realize that art was the missing piece, the thing that would ultimately fill the hole he felt.

After arriving in Missoula, Ptolemy had stopped creating and was feeling edgy and depressed again. He listened to himself honestly and once again returned to creating artwork to heal himself. As he painted, he sold his art in the streets of Missoula to try to make ends meet. Most recently, Ptolemy has been exhibiting at a variety of galleries in town, and his work can currently be seen at The Catalyst .

The first time I watched Ptolemy work, however, I did not know that he was even going to be painting. There was an art event happening at Caras Park downtown that had not been well publicized. Either that, or I just had not been paying attention. It was a Saturday afternoon in early spring, a warm day, and I was walking downtown to grab some lunch. As I crossed the bridge, I noticed the goings-on below me, and I walked down the steps to see what was happening. I wandered through the tent and saw the same familiar food vendors, the same beer tent. But what really caught my eye was a huge wall of yellow canvas that was, even then, drastically changing by the minute. Several other people had gathered to watch the artist at work, and I recognized him as Ptolemy. I walked up as he was painting to congratulate him on such a high exposure piece, and he grinned, telling me that the paints and the canvas had been donated. He wasn’t getting paid, but he was just happy to be able to paint on such a large scale. I could see the joy in his face and was happy for him. He had to work fast, as the painting was to be completed by day’s end. By the end of it, he told me, he was tired and sore from all of the reaching and bending he had to do in order to finish the painting. It was fun for me as a fellow artist to watch him work, but, as a simple casual observer, it was almost as much fun to watch others watch him work, and see the smiles as they witnessed one brushstroke cut a large swath of gray across the field of yellow that had developed, or as an area that looked completely developed disappeared beneath another field of yellow.

More photos of Ptolemy working:

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