Walt's Background

My career in art probably started in grade school where I was routinely chided for drawing things during class. These were usually airplanes and the like.   I continued to draw things on and off for a long time after that but, ironically, I never took an actual art course in my entire educational career (which includes Masters degrees in Engineering and Business) or later when I was involved in my long career in engineering and then business.

Four years ago, I left my career in business after 30 years with some frustration.  It was no longer rewarding for a lot of reasons, and I really wanted something creative to do.  I wandered into a bookstore one evening and happened upon an meeting of poets who were reading their works and I was fascinated.  So I stayed and listened until they were done.  These were regular people who wrote some quite beautiful words.  OK some of them were somewhat on the funky side but so what.  I realized that I needed to do something like that, but I was no creative writer so what should it be?  Since I had been dabbling with this art thing I decided to try it.  Since I had no idea how to start, I pulled out an old book on drawing that I had kept around since the 70’s and began to draw virtually every day.  After thrashing around for some time on my own, I began formal study with Danila Rumold, an abstract painter in Seattle , who helped me to master the basics of making art and introduced me to charcoal, ink, water color and oil painting.  Danila is a young woman of great depth, and we endlessly philosophized about art as well as working at it.  It was a fortunate beginning because I have always felt that art is more than just technique and with Danila I found that to be true.  I found myself drawn to all kinds of subjects but my emerging interest was in landscapes.  In 2005, I began study with Ned Mueller, a internationally renowned painter, in order to develop my skills in landscape painting.  Ned was instrumental in teaching me the fundamentals of composing and painting a landscape along with encouraging the flexibility to allow the subject matter to inspire the painting without being literal in the rendering.  Ned really helped me with the real thing—painting from life and I made a great friend in the process.  I am still amazed at how difficult it is to execute outdoors with limited time and he makes look easy.  Later I did more studying with Alex Kargopoltsev, a Russian impressionistic painter.  Alex took things a step further by encouraging experimentation with brushwork and color—again from life.  More recently, I have studied with Lianna Bennett.   Lianna has helped greatly with design and composition—perhaps the bedrock of good painting.  I still work with Ned and Lianna on and off, but most of my work is in the studio where I feel like I can try anything.

Walt Meldrich
waltmeldrich@comcast.net
(425) 820-8358