Charlie with Realist Oil Painter William Wolk
I have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. I marvel at the technology that every six-year-old is comfortable with and expert in, though I am nostalgic for the days when my car would allow me to drive it without sounding a condescending “beep,” when it didn’t approve, or when a friend would call to have a conversation instead of sending a text.
But then, I had a compelling new idea related to, but separate from my painting career. Pursuing this necessitated my coming on board with the world as it is today; with the connectivity of the world-wide web and the social platforms that it has spawned. It’s a new day and, to the cheers of my friends, I am ready to join in.
I have been enamored by paintings since I was just a little kid in the 50’s. That was also the birth of the modern era of painting, but I was captivated by the realists. Robin Hood and Treasure Island weren’t illustrated by the work of Jackson Pollock or Robert Motherwell; it was the action paintings of artists like Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth that got the imaginations of my generation ignited. And I would get lost in those illustrations and wonder how it was that a person could make something so wonderful as this. I began drawing…everything. Michelangelo once rightfully said that “to understand something fully, you had to draw it.” That must certainly be true because to draw something, you had to look at it and look at it deeply. That attention, that observation brought insight.
Painting requires even further depth of observation because one is not only working with subtle shading, but the shading is in color and one color effects the color next to it and so on. In painting, the object emerges from a background, and the color out of which the object emerges impacts the eye and the emotions. Color has a direct impact on how we feel. It’s no mistake that many of the psychiatric hospitals in the world have calming green walls while restaurants and night clubs tend to favor red. No mistake at all.
In upcoming articles, I will be talking about some of the events, large and small, that have influenced my life and career as an artist. I will reveal many personal accounts of the business side of my career. My hope is that by sharing a straight forward, unabashed accounting of my relationships and interactions with art collectors and fine art galleries, other artists will gain insights they will find useful in the architecture of their careers. We will look at the decisions I have made and the circumstances under which I went from being raised by a single mother, in poverty, to having a career in art in which I have sold paintings in the six figures, was honored in the Oval Office, and had my work collected by luminaries around the world.
If I may steal a line from Gus McCray from Lonesome Dove, “It’s been quite a ride.” I invite you to take that ride with me in upcoming articles on this site.
