Known both as a polymath and as an eccentric, Frank Walter was an Antiguan artist who worked mostly with the landscape surrounding him. The artist’s interests were exceptionally broad, and included visual descriptions of the flora and fauna of the island. He was also a writer; two mesh grids, placed in the center of the exhibition, offered letters, theoretical considerations, and written descriptions of what Walter saw on the island.
What Walter saw, as seen in his small, smartly colorful drawings, was a vision of the countryside remarkable for its exploratory understanding of the real and the visionary. The fields are a radiant dark green; and the tree trunks, also luminous, are dark brown in hue, contrasting with a brightly lit blue sky. The technical skill of these wonderfully memorable drawings is hardly academic, but that is of small matter. Instead, we are introduced to a visionary scenario, in which the richness of the land stands as an extended metaphor for a world about as close to paradise as we might find.
Walter himself was a proponent of nature as a style mediating feeling and imagination. In the remarkable small world called Bodeyan Tree #1 (no date), a magnificent tree, represented in a very dark tone, serves as a canopy to what looks like gray sand beneath it. In the sand, close to the tree on the bottom left, we see a small, circular expanse of lighter sand, tan in color. The darks and lights merge wonderfully well. Frank was painting a paradise he knew by heart; his art was tied to the experience of the eye and the body, not to the study of historical art. This resulted in an immediacy of experience, and also a directness of vision, that is memorable.
Often in art within the canon, the variation from work to work can be notably close (especially if the times in which the works were made closely follow each other), and we may be experiencing a very narrow gap between styles. Part of this sameness results from a similar training within an agreed-upon esthetic. The ensuing rules are considered more important than a free-spirited relationship to the unconstrained play of a landscape having come into its own. Maybe for this kind of view, Walter’s visionary techniques make it clear that it is the artist who determines how we see. Yet that restraint doesn’t mean we experience a conservative imagination
in Walter’s art. It means, instead, that control and freedom shape each other. This happens in all good art, especially when we face a painting’s balance as it moves beyond formal convention into attributes very much their own. The balance is no longer preconceived but original.
Remarkably, the artist’s strengths or artistic choices do not result from the complex mixed-race background of the artist: the result of a lineage based in white plantation owners and enslaved field workers The complicated status of a mixed-blood background must also be taken into consideration In the drawings on show no references are made about racial dissonance. Instead, Walter looked to the land for inspiration and found it without losing touch of a governing intellect directing his efforts in an original manner. Convention was not a primary concern. We can say, then, that Walter was lucky–he did not have to negotiate a public persona, but was able to concentrate on the memorable beauty
of the island instead.
In one undated work, Untitled (Black Bird in Tree), a black bird sits in the middle of a tree, its dark form surrounded by curling trunks and branches that twist and turn within a deep-set dark green twilight. It is a mystical painting whose baroque background of curving branches and trunks and groups of leaves, in combination with the dark green atmosphere and background filling the air with a kind of doubt, results in a work of mystery. The inexplicable aura is more so by the isolation of the single bird. Walter had a symbolic outlook, which he regularly tried to intensify by creating exquisite scenarios whose beauty added to his conception,
In another work, Self-Portrait Series: Yellow Shirt (Man in Tree(no date), a man, perhaps Frank himself, stands between two large limbs of a tree, which fork out away from the figure and end up, In the two corners of the composition, large efflorescences of green top the trees. This foliage clashes with the heavy gray and white breakers, crashing over each other, that take over the middle of the drawing. The figure, wearing a bright yellow shirt, is the only human presence available. This turns the storm even more otherworldly and frightening than we might find it, even in a storm.
In Walter’s portrait of a man in a yellow-and-white striped shirt, it becomes clear that the artist’s affinity with his image comes close enough to be a self-portrait. Facing doors yellow and orange in color, the person depicted is seen in profile, with a bit of agitation in his demeanor. A wooden rail stands next to him on the right, while some sort of top knot looks like it is affixed to the subject’s head. It could be a self-portrait, or a presentation of someone he felt close to.
The portrait’s psychic precariousness is both the consequence of individual study and the general awareness that people are more vulnerable than they seem. The scenario does not appear too much a comment on difficult circumstances; instead it is a view of someone who is likely unknowing in the face of chance, One hesitates to see dissonance in the work too quickly, yet we remember that Walter was racially complex, coming from a background of plantation workers and the owners of the plantation itself. Walter’s racial background is a point not to be forgotten. Even if Walter evaded any trace of prejudice or racial difficulty, it becomes clear that the implications of
change, given the racial differences occurring in a century overwhelmed by discord, would proceed with an eye focused on possible misunderstanding.
For all the moving landscape works Walter nade, it is clear that his intelligence has an abstract character, as well as a visual outlook. Certainly, the art aspect of the drawings is easily clear; it is hard to find more moving treatments, especially in drawings limited in dimensions, than the landscape art made by the artist. It is clear that his feeling for the rural areas of Antigua is a matter of genuine enjoyment and affection. The result is work with jewel-like colors and highly skilled arrangements of nature (water, trees, ducks, cows) that stand out due to their sympathetic existence and understanding of a world that Walter saw as very much alive. But it is also
true that a mystical thinking gripped the artist’s perception; it lent an abstract quality even to the most direct of the images belonging to nature.
How did Walter demonstrate his interest in a point of view distant from the forms of everyday life? He did what a lot of very good artists have done: create an abstract world, in which forms, and the relations between them, would be understood as shapes and attachments among themselves, and no more. Walter’s ability to express both the details dictated by sight and the ideas developed in the mind makes him particularly gifted.
The prominent image that comes to mind when considering Walter’s cerebral interests is an abstract design, almond shaped in its layout, that is broken up into elegant shapes.This oval eye is divided into half–gray on the left and black on the right. At the bottom center of the oval is another eye, circular, filled with rings and circles of color. A pole climbs upward from the lower eye. From the looks of things, the overall image seems predominantly non-objective, that is, until we find out that Walter has named the drawing Milky Way Galaxy (no date); the words’ initial letters are found above the oval eye.
If this work is a treatment of something that is meant to be visually understood, Walter’s audience will have a long way to go before making sense of the picture. Maybe we can best understand the work as a diagram, in which abstraction uses natural design to make something that the consequences of nature the drawing addresses. It is hard to say for sure, since this version of the Milky Way Galaxy is very free of references to any particular things.
In any case, the truth lies in a middle ground—Walter was galvanized by the deep beauty of the island he lived on. But he also supplied his understanding of Antigua’s natural beauty with a cognizance that put things in place—abstractly. Gifted at many things, Walter used his intellect to show how the grasses, bushes, trees, streams, and oceans he knew so well left room for thought as well as feeling. Strong art has structure, and structure is a cerebral value. By joining the visionary to the cerebral (the latter not always visible), Walter created a wonderful body of work. It leans neither toward mere description, nor toward intellectual insight. It looks like Walter knew from
the start that a drawing is an independent entity, beyond any attempt to constrain it.
Finally, the idea of high and low culture should be addressed. Walter was not working in an art milieu; he was on his own. This increased his independenc, but it also cemented his isolation. His ability to work up a style of his own, free of easy influence, is one of this greatest achievement. He is strong enough an artist that questions of training must remain secondary in the face of his achievement. It is a mistake to contrast the skills of high culture with the more earthy abilities of someone gifted but without training. Indeed, a show like this, at the well-known Drawing Center, makes it evident that the kinds of contrasts we used to emphasize no longer hold. What does matter is the
achievement as it stands, without reference to a professionalism we cannot truly conform. Walter’s art, a gift of heart and mind, shows us that fine art looks to communication, no matter the background or time in which the work was made.
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