10 minute read
PleinAir Salon
At the Mill Pond #2
2021, oil, 16 x 16 in. Available from Hagan Fine Art, Charleston, SC Plein air
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In Park
2021, oil, 8 x 8 in. Collection the artist Plein air
that seeks unconventional compositions, thus making what could simply be a nostalgic subject intriguing, and in part because Walker is an expert at painting the extraordinary light that occurs in nature for the briefest of moments. We may not have grown up in a part of the country where the barns are built in the manner of the one in The Day Ahead, but we’ve all seen those fleeting minutes when the bottom of a building is awash in the bluish tones of dawn or dusk shadows while the topmost part is glowing with the warmth of the sun on the horizon.
“There’s a lot of memory involved in all of it,” Walker says of his body of work. “Some of it is from reference, but even if I use a picture of a scene, I have to take note, on location, of the little things that I won’t get from a photo. And I tell my students you are running uphill if you use someone else’s photo, because you don’t get that direct interaction with the subject.”
MATERIAL MATTERS
Walker makes his own panels and tones them a vibrant orange. He likes to paint on Dibond, a product with a polyethylene core sandwiched between aluminum sheets, which offers significant strength for its weight. The artist buys 4 x 8-foot sheets and cuts them to the size and format he wants. In order for DTM bonding primer to adhere, he must remove the protective plastic film from the Dibond and scuff the surface, then apply several layers of primer, sanding between coats.
“That’s basically my gesso,” he says. “I cut the sheets into custom sizes for commissions or for my own concepts that call for a non-standard format.” The artist also likes ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), a polymer blend that is about the same weight as Dibond but is sturdier, resisting damages to its corners if bumped. He must sand the gloss off the ABS and use only
Step 1
Walker typically starts with a toned surface stained with straight cadmium orange, although he sometimes mixes a bit of yellow ochre into the orange “to temper the blue of the sky that pushes a cool light onto things.”
Step 2
Using a mixture of transparent oxide red and ultramarine blue, Walker sketches out the composition. His sketch is generally an outline of the basic shapes, but if something catches his eye, he will include specific aspects of the element. For example, consider the stain on the bucket that he chose to indicate in this early stage. “I noticed the line on the bucket and thought it was more interesting than just putting down a cylinder,” he says. For most traditional landscapes, he starts in the background and moves forward in the composition in sequence. For pieces that are more like portraits or a vignetted scene, he begins with the main subject and branches out from there. “I made this piece en plein air, with the shadows moving with the light, so I was already starting to emphasize and capture the reasons I stopped to paint this subject,” says Walker. “If I can do this in the outline drawing stage, then I am doing pretty well. If it isn’t working with just the line drawing, then it isn’t going to work as a painting.”
Step 3
Vibrant color distinguishes the painting early on. This is by design. “The further you go into painting, the more mud you can produce,” says the artist. “So I start with bright colors and know they will get toned down. I’m counting on the mud. That green was not going to stay that vibrant.”
Step 4
The artist then began to analyze the painting to see what it might need or how it may be improved. “I asked myself, ‘How do I keep this from being boring?’ I put more interest into the wheelbarrow because I noticed that the marks in the background were starting to distract from the subject matter,” says Walker. “I decided to add the metal pan on the bottom right to unbalance the composition and make it more interesting.” Although some artists save the brightest brights — the highlights — until the end, Walker placed those bright spots in the wheelbarrow in an earlier stage. “I wanted to see how far I could go with that, painting those bright screws.”
Final Step (opposite page)
Still concerned about preserving the hierarchy of the composition, Walker rolled a brayer over the background to soften it and kill some of the texture. “I let it sit for 20 minutes before I decided to do that,” he says. All that was left was his signature — but Walker uses a stamp for many smaller pieces. “I used to sign my paintings. Now I use a stamp I made. It’s a crown that looks like a W on an S. I also sign and stamp the back for provenance.”
Poppin’ a Wheelie
2021, oil, 12 x 12 in. Collection the artist Plein air
Conversations With Brenda
2021, oil, 10 x 8 in. Collection the artist Plein air
oil-based solvents and mediums on it. “Then I just paint directly on the prepared ABS,” he says. “I have never found anything easier.”
His palette is essentially a split primary with a few convenience colors: alizarin crimson, cadmium red medium, transparent red oxide, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium lemon yellow, viridian, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue (usually), and either Permalba white or titanium white. He favors synthetic bright brushes, generally a size 8 or 6. “Sometimes I’ll use one brush throughout the whole painting, maybe going down to a 4 or a 2 for details,” he says.
ARTISTIC ROOTS
Like many fine artists today, Walker has deep roots in the field of illustration. This means a life in the studio, making plein air an endeavor off the path. He says the most difficult part of adding plein air to his repertoire of artistic skills was gauging the color values in his paintings while outdoors. “The hardest thing was my light perception outside,” the artists says, noting that he has only been strongly active in plein air painting for two years. “I work on white board in the studio, so toning a surface was not natural to me. I learned that when I painted plein air most of my paintings looked good outside — but inside, they could look very blue and gray, and like nothing that I remember seeing out there.” Clearly, this is a slight weakness Walker has long since addressed, but for those of us still developing as painters, his confession of a modest struggle is encouraging and endearing.
His time in the illustration grind may have thrown up one small obstacle, but it also built up key chops in the artist in terms of color mixing, drawing, composing, and evoking a mood. Illustration also gave Walker a surprising gift. “The deadlines and the unappreciated nature of illustration is not something I want to deal with again,” he says. “But that grueling treatment has made my life much easier as a painter. I recently had someone call me from the Department of Economic Development who needed a painting as a gift for a bigwig diplomat from South Korea. They called on Friday and said, ‘Can you get this to me Thursday?’ I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I thought you were going to give me a problem and want it on Monday.’ So I sat down in my studio on Saturday with my wife, daughter, and dog nearby and knocked it out, wiped my hands, and was done with it. I only had to wait for the paint to dry.” Walker used Gamblin’s solvent-free gel to expedite the drying of the paint.
Green Harvest
2020, oil on panel, 12 x 12 in. Available from Lovetts Gallery, Tulsa, OK Studio from a plein air study
Saturday in Georgetown
2021, oil, 12 x 16 in. Collection Calloway Fine Art & Consulting, Washington, D.C. Plein air
FAVORITE SUBJECTS
People like tractors, and they like paintings of tractors. Walker delivers tractor paintings that are nearly epic in their beauty. Look at Green Harvest, a portrait of a green crop harvester, with its subject smack dab in the middle of the canvas. The harvester is well done, but there’s also a beautiful sunset and some arresting light effects clipping the top of the machine. “I’m trying not to paint what is already expected,” Walker says. “I don’t go for the obvious if I can help it. If I’m painting an object, I’m trying to find a way to break the rules. I’m looking for simplicity and nostalgia, not necessarily documentation.” Walker says nostalgia doesn’t mean personal nostalgia for him. “It’s countryside, not home,” he says. “It’s about getting away to the simple life, not the hustle and bustle of city life.”
He doesn’t completely eschew urban scenes, but he tempers them, as in Saturday in Georgetown. “That painting was about light and cast shadows,” Walker explains. “Because it was a Saturday, the bustle wasn’t going to stop. I had to paint it in sections. I did the crowd near the building, then I did the cars at one go when the light stopped them. I knew the people in the foreground should not be emphasized because they weren’t important — they were not going to be there long at all. I placed them in the piece by drawing their silhouette, and then I just left them. I had to put them down and leave them. Near the end, I used a brayer to mess up the scene to give it more interest and so it was not as graphic. I wanted it to look like a painting, not a photo.” Walker was also careful to leave the cars and the people undefined so the piece would not be dated by clothes and trends in car design.
In many of his pieces, Walker’s preference for dramatic light is evident.
Shrimpin’
2021, oil, 11 x 14 in. Collection the artist Plein air
A Dappled Stroll
2021, oil, 18 x 24 in. Private collection Plein air
“Midday doesn’t do a lot for me,” he says. “But even night scenes, where the artificial light is constant, are about light.” The artist points out that color in night scenes seems more saturated, and looks correct when painted that way, because of the contrast between illuminated areas and the darkness. “The artificial light will make things seem more saturated because of the contrast with the descending darkness,” says Walker.
LOOKING BACK AND AHEAD
In the manner of many fully formed artists, Walker will teach some guidelines of painting, even as he breaks them and recommends students be open to doing so as well. “I don’t like to get bogged down in the rules and the must-haves,” he says. “I get read those rules by students even when I am teaching a workshop. I think it’s more important to figure out what works for you. For example, I couldn’t work using the tone that other people use on their surfaces, such as a brown- or yellow-toned canvas. I tell
History of Light
2021, oil, 14 x 11 in. Collection the artist Plein air
