About
At a young age Walter was drawn to painting through weekend visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He spent hours staring at and studying the works of Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sargent, Manet, Eakins, Homer, Courbet and Mancini. Art became a way of making sense of the world, and he learned how to draw and paint through self-discovery and a mentorship from a weekly homeschool art club. After joining the Army National Guard at seventeen, in order to pay his way through art school, Walter instead found himself rappelling out of Blackhawks on the Oregon coast, cleaning out flooded schools, handing out food and water in New Orleans, and sticking out the turret on top of a Stryker behind a machine gun somewhere in the desert of Iraq. Still, he managed to create, painting murals on barracks walls, developing Army unit emblems and signage, writing love letters for fellow soldiers to send to their wives back home, creating tattoo designs, and drawing portraits of those who served alongside him in the dusty streets of Sabaa Al Bour, 30 kms northwest of Baghdad. On returning home he and his wife Margaux worked on art exhibits that incorporated paintings, photographs, furniture, journals, and jewelry. Together they created immersive worlds that explored the mysteries of craft and industry. Working with their hands, paper, wood, metal, fabric, paint and pen they drew inspiration from the layers of stories found in derelict and forgotten objects and out of these collaborations their company, Peg and Awl, was born. Since those early days they have worked together developing and making treasures that encourage and aid in an investigative and creative lifestyle. This collaboration has helped form Walter's paintings and drawings. His work is tactile yet contemplative, grounded in direct experience yet exploring stories and themes of spontaneity and perseverance, adventure and ritual, freedom and duty. It is a conversation between nature's great abundance and the human endeavor to live on the frontier and create something meaningful in this world.
