Christine Walker
Sebastopol, CA
Christine Walker is a visual artist and author living in Northern California.
Message
Christine Walker is a visual artist and author who works in oil on canvas and mixed media on paper. She exhibits in galleries, corporate/nonprofit spaces, and museums. Her paintings are in corporate and private collections across the United States. She is the author of "A Painter's Garden: Cultivating the Creative Life" (narrative nonfiction, Warner Books), co-author and illustrator of "Wooleycat's Musical Theater" (children's book with song CD, Tortuga Press), and "Tap Dancing at the Bluebird" (novel, Sibylline Press). Christine was born in Kansas City, Missouri, lived for many years in san Francisco, and lives now in Sonoma County, CA. She holds a BFA from the University of Kansas, an MA in Creative Arts Interdisciplinary from San Francisco State University, and an MFA in Writing and Literature in Fiction from Bennington College.
Statement
Nature, dance, and music inform my work. I’m attracted to the resilient, hopeful, transient, and transformative: the earth, water, skies, people moving within environments, and evidence of human activity. A trace of the seen, felt, and questioned appears on the canvas or paper. To apply and incise paint, I use brushes, gloved fingertips, sticks, and other tools. In this era of instant impressions, I appreciate that art takes time to make and requires that I look and consider.
My oil paintings have evolved over nearly five decades in thematic series influenced by my surroundings and investigations: Pedestrians crossing downtown streets near my San Francisco warehouse studio, my sensibilities influenced by study of dance and choreography; Swimmers in pools and lakes where I trained for Bay Area triathlons; Harbors and Island Songs from visits to the Bahamas and Hawaii; Gardens cultivated in my small urban backyard; wilder Abandoned Gardens and Habitats explored near my rural Sonoma County studio. My artistic career has developed in tandem with work as a creative consultant. When I found myself frequently aloft across the U.S. for client projects as a strategic visual facilitator, I sketched the views from my window seat of the flattened landscape and the impact from nature and populations. Those sketches inspired further investigation and resulted in my Terrains series.
In January 2020, my son died—a tragedy beyond comprehension. The pandemic hit and, while on zoom calls with art friends, I painted small watercolors based on my aerial sketches. In the studio, I fought the despair by thinly layering white paint over the Terrains in progress. Eventually, the veils of light beckoned a tender way forward into interior dialogue, and I began anew. Shapes gleaned from the watercolors became storied with the joys and complexities of Quinn in my life, rather than the loss of him. Each day, listening to the same CDs over and over again—a friend’s jazz guitar, Quinn singing and playing his guitar. I entered a rhythm.
After four years, I could see light within the darkness and began painting the starry night backgrounds. My "Comings & Goings in Joy & Light" paintings are maps of the heart. They are meditations on love and states of being, puzzles of impermanence, kinetic energy, memory, movement, and spirit painted while on a journey through grief. I continue to evolve the series in tribute to my son and in celebration of the time and intentions we human beings share with one another in our comings and goings.