Ellicottville and James Niehues
The Picasso of Skiing’s Brush Stroked Ellicottville

By Dan Balkin

    Among skiers in our region, it is not unusual for chairlift conversations to make sidebars into discussing planned ski trips for the current winter.  If one is headed to a renowned ski resort, there is a good chance you will pick up a trail map painted by James Niehues.  James who?  As the article title indicates, he is known as the Picasso of Skiing.  That is only one of his aliases.  He is so well regarded in the world of artistic, hand painted ski maps, that he is also known as the “The Picasso of the Piste,” “Rembrandt of the Snow,” “Michelangelo of the Snow,” “Rembrandt of the Ski Trail,” “Monet of the Mountain,” and, just in case you thought it would roll on, “Norman Rockwell of Ski Resorts.”  Whew! As we will see, he has fairly earned these accolades.

     His maps have been used by millions of people.  The proof?  During his illustrious 30-year career, James Niehues has painted over 430 maps spanning ski resorts on five continents.  He has created maps or prints for ski areas as close as Ellicottville’s Holiday Valley and as distant as Telluride CO, Whistler/Blackcomb BC, Valle Nevado in Chile, and Coronet Peak in New Zealand.  Before the trade wars kicked in, he even did a map for a resort in China!  James Niehues painted his first trail map in 1988.  He had a mundane 9-5 job and would wake up as early as 2am to paint his earliest maps.  As we can gather from his resume, however, his artistic gifts soon earned him the right to paint during daylight hours.  There was a three-step formula that guided his extraordinary success: First, he would fly over ski areas at about 2,000 feet and take panoramic pictures / Then, to add another important perspective, he would swoop in at about 500 feet over the base area and take close-up shots.  Second, during the pencil sketching phase he would masterfully “manipulate the mountain” in a realistic way so that all the slopes can be seen in one dimension.  The larger the ski area, the more complex it is to create a one-dimensional image that encompasses all the trails from a single perspective.  Think about a massive ski area with trails in different valleys and compass directions; his genius was that he could capture it all on a map that looked accurate and realistic.   Challenging?  Absolutely – but it was not work for James Niehues, it was a labor of love.  Third, using his pencil sketches as a template, he created strikingly original watercolor paintings of the trail layout for each area.    Each painting was then mass produced as either a frameable print or the folded ski map found at a lift ticket counter.  One of the most fascinating aspects of his artistry was the way he captured the vast forests encompassing ski areas with his brush strokes and made them look alive and realistic.  If you are intrigued and would like to look at or purchase a print of a famous ski area you have visited or frequent (including Holiday Valley), you can google jamesniehues.com and see a remarkable collection of worldwide trail maps.  There is a celebrated story, that when Picasso first viewed the famous prehistoric animal paintings in the caves at Lascaux, France, he said “We have learned nothing in 12,000 years!”  Meaning?  Our prehistoric ancestors had already captured humankind’s unique gift for finding something sacred, enduring, and beautiful in art.  Imagine if our fur-clad ancestors knew about ski area maps…