A Shared Collection

Contemporary art aficionados Chris and Molly Hawks' give a tour of their home and explain how their passion for collecting art has turned into a family affair.

Molly and Chris love the way Christian Burch’s family portrait captures their son Henry’s fuzzy blond hair.

If there’s one thing Molly and Chris Hawks particularly love about Christian Burch’s portrait of their family, it’s how the artist so perfectly captured their younger son Henry’s hair. Though the four figures in the painting are viewed from behind, the halo of blond fuzz around the little boy’s head, then 2, is instantly recognizable to the parents and brings back fond memories.

“Every time I walk by it I want to touch it,” Chris said of Henry’s hair. Chris and Molly commissioned the painting about 10 years ago after admiring a series of bar scenes by Burch, who’s a novelist as well as a painter. At the time, the couple just wanted a portrait of themselves with Henry and Charlie, their older son, by a Jackson Hole-based artist whose work appealed to them. But bringing that painting into their home unleashed a passion in them for collecting art, particularly pieces by painters who live in the valley or are represented by galleries there. From Mike Piggott, Kristina Loggia, Carrie Geraci and Ted Waddell to Andrea Broyles, Kaidi Dunstan and Susan Brearey, their collection today represents a who’s who of the Jackson Hole art world.

But it’s a particular slice of that world. Molly and Chris favor bold, figurative and often avant-garde works and count themselves lucky that their new hobby coincided with the evolution of the Jackson Hole gallery scene beyond traditional western genres into more
contemporary fare. “It’s changed so much in the last several years,” Molly said of the valley’s art environment.”  I’m so impressed with the choices we have in contemporary art.” The couple isn’t locked into buying locally; but they appreciate being able to meet the artists and talk with them about their work, Chris said.

Neither he nor Molly picks artwork based on who did it or how the rest of the world views it. “I would never buy a piece of art as an investment if I didn’t love it,” Molly said. With Lyndsey McCandless Contemporary, JH Muse Gallery, Diehl Gallery and Oswald Gallery, as well as Art Association happenings like the semi-annual “Whoddunnit” show and sale, she and her husband have been able to not only indulge their tastes but also expand their horizons. A case in point is their painting by Massachusetts-based John Gibson, a still-life artist with one subject: balls. The painting did not initially appeal to them when JH Muse Gallery owner Tayloe Piggott brought it to their then-home. “It really didn’t touch me,” Chris recalls, “but Tayloe said ‘let’s just try it.’”

And try it they did. After a couple of nights sitting on the couch, sipping wine and studying the painting, the couple discovered something about that single ball in the painting that clicked for them. “At first you see a flat piece of artwork,” Chris said. “But when I looked at the lines of the painting and the depth of the sphere and the fact that everything is geometrically correct, I all of a sudden had an immense appreciation of what it took to actually paint it.”

Another painting, “Falling Angel,” by Andrea Broyles, of Wilson, Wyoming, was bit unsettling to Molly when she first saw it. The face on the abstract female form “was eerie, almost frightening,” she recalls. Now with the painting in a new location, “it’s just a face,” she said. “This way it’s not so dark.” The gender-unspecific figure in “The Mask,” another Broyles painting hanging nearby, prompts a guessing game each time Molly looks at it. “It’s unclear if it’s a male or a female,” she said.

The couple finds something new to like each time they look at all the pieces in their collection, and the home in H-H-R Ranches they moved into in September with their boys, now 16 and 12, provides the perfect venue. Designed by local architect Stephen Dynia, the contemporary house features a long sunlit gallery that enables them to display paintings and sculptures in a way they never could before. Chris and Molly keep busy, he working as an attorney and serving on the boards of Teton Science Schools and the Jackson Hole Ski Club, and she serving as a board member for the Art Association and the Community Safety Network. In those times when they are at home, all it takes is a walk through their gallery or a few minutes on the couch in their living room for them to appreciate their artwork in a whole new way.

A particular favorite of both Molly and Chris is a group scene painted by Kaidi Dunstan, a former Jackson Hole resident now living and working in London. “It’s hung in three different homes,” Chris said. “Where it is now, you can actually study it and appreciate it in this house. What I like most is the depth and different number of faces you see, depending on the light or angle.”

It’s been a happy coincidence for the couple that their taste in art is similar. They can enjoy mountain landscapes, cowboy and Indian portraits and wildlife art in museums, galleries and other people’s homes, but have amassed a collection uniquely suited to their own particular sensibilities.

“Molly and I just truly wanted to break away and do something different with our collection,” Chris said. “Jointly we found it really suited our taste. Combining a contemporary house with a contemporary collection was a home run for us.”

The painting that started it all, Burch’s portrait of the family, now hangs in the family room near their boys’ rooms. When he and brother Henry are grown men, they can show it to their children and grandchildren.  Maybe they’ll talk about Henry’s hair or about what it was like to grow up in Jackson Hole. Or maybe they’ll talk about how their parents, Molly and Chris, discovered a love of art in a painting prompted by love of family.