After living in Steamboat for over 30 years, MB Warner’s Minnesota accent still lingers. It has of way of making everything she says sound lyrical and upbeat, even when she’s being blunt. The self-proclaimed ski bum first came west in the 70s, doing stints in Aspen, Sun Valley, and Steamboat before returning home to finish college, but she couldn’t stay away from Steamboat for long. “I had a Bachelor of Arts degree and oh boy, there I was, still cleaning toilets. I’ve done every job in Steamboat you can think of,” she says.
Warner may call herself a ski bum, but she is a professional artist in every sense of the word, and the latest local talent selected to create the 109th Steamboat Winter Carnival poster. It’s true, she bee-bopped between school and the mountains, first getting her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Minnesota and then completing her MFA at Cal State Long Beach. She studied photography and printmaking and dabbled with every medium in between before returning to Steamboat for good in 1987.
In the early 90s, the Steamboat Arts Council awarded Warner a grant to travel to Italy to study the Reggio Emelia Approach for teaching art to kids, and that launched her career as an educator. She worked at the Whiteman School for a year, taught summer programs at Perry Mansfield, and eventually worked as an adjunct art professor at Colorado Mountain College. “It was fantastic. I got to teach so many things. I had the best time with my students, and still keep in touch with some of them.”
Warner built a solar-powered home studio in 2010 on the 16 acres where she shares a “hobbit house” with her husband in Strawberry Park and got back to painting full-time two years later. Spawned by a challenge to complete 100 paintings in 100 days and document it all on her blog, Warner found her footing again as a full-time artist. “I painted everything I wanted. I even painted a trash can because it was fall and the light was so beautiful. I should probably be retired, but I’ve been painting nonstop ever since.”
When it comes to her process, Warner likes to rely on her skills and training as a photographer. She uses her camera to capture an image and then paint it. “Because I’m a photographer, I think through my camera. How I see is through the lens,” she says. Warner calls her style “a kind of funky, contemporary realism.” The process of using an image to create a painting goes back to her roots in printmaking. “I realized I could use my photography skills and my painting skills and blend them together. With paint, I can take a photo and do what I want with it. I can use the image as a jumping-off point.”
That’s exactly how she approached the 2022 Steamboat Winter Carnival commemorative poster art, researching old images from the photo archives at the Tread of Pioneers Museum. “I went through their whole collection and then found this postcard of Howelsen, and it just felt meant to be. It’s a retro look at what used to be there. It’s so real and so local. I loved it.”
Even though she’s well established as a prolific artist whose iconic works featuring local landscapes are exhibited in galleries all over town, she was still intimidated by the prospect of being chosen to do the Winter Carnival poster. “It’s a huge responsibility,” she says. She used oil on a birch 48” x 36” birch panel, considerably larger than the standard 18” x 24” poster size. “I’ve painted small for 10 years and now I’m painting big.” Pressure aside, Warner sees the project as an opportunity to contribute a piece of history to the town and community she has called home for so long. “I love old Steamboat and how simple it was. This painting means a lot to me. I hope it brings some joy and happiness to this community, especially after the last two years we’ve had.”