Hey everyone, this week I wanted to highlight an exhibit that’s up at the Waverly Small Works Gallery in Waverly, PA. I went to the opening night and also listened to the artist talk given by David Walsh. It’s running until October 20th and there is no charge to enter the gallery space.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera and I had to use my phone for pictures so I apologize for the poor image quality. The gallery has a bunch of these small works (shown above) and two larger pieces, one being a drawing. His talk consisted of a short slideshow of his paintings with an explanation his style and his reasoning and intent behind each piece. One aspect of his work that he really enjoys messing around with is perspective. His large works that he showed us, particularly the ones about Yosemite National Park, looked like flattened out maps of landscapes. David explained that he wants the viewer to look at the piece and connect to its history through the way Walsh is re-imagining a landscape to get all of the important locations in one piece. By important locations, he means all of the so-called touristy hot-spots of a location (i.e. Yosemite has its Half-Dome and the Cathedrals, etc.)
Walsh also spoke a lot about the intense readings he’ll do about the site he’s drawing inspiration from. Using the Grand Canyon this time, Walsh painted a huge piece that looked as if he was flying in an airplane above to capture the landscape, when in reality, he was, as he coined the term, “mapping” out the image he wanted to paint through his personal photographs and through readings about the site he was visiting. Many of the paintings he spoke about were only included in the slideshow and not in the actual show, but if you were to go on his website ( https://davewalshgallery.com/ ), the painting I’m referring to is called “South Rim (Grand Canyon)”.
A lot of his works are huge and wouldn’t have been able to fit into this small gallery space. Being able to look at Walsh’s work in person and having the pleasure of listening to his artist talk was amazing. I love the subject matter of the history of American landscapes and it really fueled my desire to do a cross country road trip this summer. This exhibit is totally worth the trip and the Gallery is only about 25 minutes from Marywood’s campus, so GO CHECK IT OUT! Have a great week, all!
