Art & Galleries
Artist spotlight: painter Bart Walker
By LEANNE HAASE GOEBEL
Bart Walker says of his representational landscape paintings, "I'm trying to be honest and produce something that gives people a sense of pleasure and a desire to be in that place."
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Intersection, oil on board
Working en plein air, the artist paints small, quick studies of the Rocky Mountain West and the northern coast of California, which he then translates onto larger canvases back in his studio in the Teton Valley of Idaho.
"My hope is that my next painting is going to be more successful than the last, but," he adds, "it never gets easier." Over the past dozen years, Walker has won numerous awards and been a part of many group and one-man shows.
The subtle nuances of color and light and the beauty of nature intrigue him. Those nuances may be captured in one brush stroke while painting outside, but, back in the studio, that one brush stroke requires many additional marks on the canvas to truly capture the scene. In order to do so, Walker tries to keep as many of those larger canvases around for as long as possible.
"It helps to let things rest a while," he says. "I want the painting to have more interesting layers than you can get in one sitting." So he will often turn his newly painted canvases over to face the wall, looking at them again only when he has a fresh eye for detail.
Walker and his wife, Tracy, travel several times a year to Northern California where he paints coastal scenes that are dra-matically different from his snow-covered Teton landscapes. "The snow simplifies the scene and provides a basis for judging color and value," he says.
Before picking up a paintbrush, Walker had a successful 15-year career designing and crafting fine lodge-pole furnishings.
A student and friend of artists Scott Christensen, Tim Lawson, Robert Morre, Kang Cho, Skip Whitcomb, Matt Smith, and Zhang Wen Xin, Walker is not a formally trained artist, though his father and brother both are accomplished painters. Well-thumbed books on Schmid, Reese, Fechin, Zorn, and Sorolla speak to his ever-yearning desire to learn more about painting.
Issue: June 2009