Clay Pape Painter & Taproom Manager Extraordinaire

Have you met our Taproom Manager Clay yet?! Last summer we added Clay to our trusty taproom squad and now, not even a year later, we truly couldn’t imagine Draught Works without him! Clay’s fierce determination, superman-like efficiency, and cool-collected-level-headedness are just a handful of reasons he’s become an indispensable cog in our taproom management wheel. 

Not only is Clay a crucial part of the Draught Works management team, he’s also an exceptionally talented local artist! Born and raised in Stevensville, Clay’s journey as an artist began right here in his own backyard, painting the limitless landscapes that Western Montana has to offer as an abstract expression of his deep unwavering love for the natural world and the indisputable destructive impact humans and industry can have on it.

A master of contrast and texture, Clay enjoys using non-traditional industrial materials like burned paper, wood stain, graphite, copper leaf, and wood glue in his paintings to invoke a sense of tension and change within the landscapes themselves. “A lot of the reason I use wood stain is simply because it doesn’t mix with water,” he says. “I watch those materials fight as I’m forming them into some suggestion of something — acid rain from the sky or a turgid landscape.” Clay’s raw talent and body of work is extremely diverse, and at times quite dramatic and purposeful often shedding light on the impacts of climate change. He also thoroughly enjoys working with pastels as well.

We’re proudly hosting a wide variety of Clay Pape’s art on the Draught Works walls for the month of June, though his work can also be found at the Dana Gallery in downtown Missoula, MT. Read more about Clay’s background on the Dana Gallery website here.

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