Michael Walker

I have known Michael Walker from our days as hippies growing up in New Jersey. He has always been an artist, from painter to glass maker and back to painter. In the last several years he has been working on a series of water images. I find them beautiful, evocative and plain in the way effective pictures usually are.
This is what he says about them:


the technique got thick and i start with acrylic paste mixed with acrylic colors...smush a thick layer on with a spackle knife...it is sort of like being a plasterer on a wall. i slash lines in it and pull up toothy areas with a rough roller. it goes fast, the stuff sags a little as it dries. accidents occur- they are a main part of painting.
i am staying with, in water...what is under the surface, what pokes up through it.
something happens...paint is a fluid medium, i have an image in my mind that flickers between what is or could be there...my hand arcs back and forth over the canvas...like developer pulling something out of the emulsion on photographic paper.
it dries...next day the smoothing, crisping pixels begin with oil.
when a painting is "done" something always remains of what i saw into it while painting. but the "seeing" is most present before.

Sea Composition




Sand




River Grass




Kies Beach




Jupiter Island






Buzzard's Bay, Cape Cod




Cedar Creek Grass




Island Beach