Meet the Author/Illustrator

ARTIST’S RECEPTION

Who:  WALT DAVIS

When:  Friday, September 17, 2010, 6-8 pm

What better pairing with Texas wine could there be than a book & artwork about Texas?

Join us on Friday, September 17, 6-8 pm when Walt & Isabel Davis will be on hand to discuss their book “Exploring the Edges of Texas“. The Salado Winery gallery will be filled with Walt’s related art.  Each of the sixteen chapters opens with an original drawing by Walt and represents a segment of the Texas border where the authors selected a special place—a national park, a stretch of river, a mountain range, or an archeological site. Using a firsthand account of that place written by a previous visitor (artist, explorer, naturalist, or archeologist), they then identified a contemporary voice (biologist, rancher, river-runner, or paleontologist) to serve as a modern-day guide for their journey of rediscovery. This dual perspective allows the authors to attach personal stories to the places they visited, to connect the past with the present, and to compare Texas then with Texas now. Says Walt:

The natural world is my subject–watercolor my medium.  I believe that pigment, dissolved in water, and applied to paper produces more luminous color than any other medium.  It is perfect for capturing the glowing transparency of a Texas sky, a shimmering reflection, or the translucence of a newly unfurled leaf. 

 The medium is mercurial however: sometimes difficult, always full of surprises. I constantly weigh the importance of original intent against the unexpected opportunities that present themselves as the work progresses.  For me, painting in watercolor is a series of negotiations with the medium often involving painful decisions, trade offs, and sacrifices.  The ever present risk of failure lends excitement to the process and makes success especially sweet.   

 I am primarily a landscape painter, inspired by the beauty nature produces when left to express itself according to its own needs and potentialities.  Painting allows me to enter into that world and experience it in a more personal and intimate way.  Hopefully, the resulting painting captures the essence of a place and allows the viewer to experience it more deeply as well.

 A landscape is composed of essential elements (rocks, soil, water, plants, animals) playing their appointed roles according to fundamental principles.  A work of art is composed of essential elements as well (line, shape, value, color, texture) obeying a different but no less fundamental set of principles.  The challenge for the representational landscape painter is to choreograph a delicate dance between art and nature coaxing the fundamental truth of one to illuminate the fundamental truth of the other.

Whether retracing botanist Charles Wright’s 600-mile walk to El Paso in 1849 or paddling Houston’s Buffalo Bayou, where John James Audubon saw ivory-billed woodpeckers in 1837, the Davises seek to remind readers that the state’s natural history was written by passionate and determined people. Anyone interested in Texas or its rich natural history will find deep enjoyment in Exploring the Edges of Texas.   Explore the book here.