Meet Artist and Gallerist Neal T. Walsh - Inside Art with Michael Rose

Meet Artist and Gallerist Neal T. Walsh - Inside Art with Michael Rose

 

Neal T. Walsh is a name familiar to scores of local artists. As Gallery Director at AS220 for over twenty years, he has helped to shepherd numerous exhibitions to fruition at downtown’s core art space. Walsh is also an accomplished artist in his own right, and is the subject of a current solo exhibition at Galerie le Domaine at 173 Waterman Street on the East Side. On view through September 10, the exhibition features the wonderfully nuanced paintings of a multi-talented arts worker.

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Walsh, a University of Rhode Island alum, studied journalism and history in college. In the early days of his artistic development, he was involved in a performance group and explored other ways of making art before settling on painting as his primary medium. Today, he works out of a home studio in rural Foster, where the colors of the nearby woods impact his earthy palette.

 

 

Considering what he enjoys about being an artist in Rhode Island, Walsh points to the ingenuity of the community, saying, “Rhode Island is a vibrant and creative place to live as an artist.  The arts communities in Rhode Island are very supportive: artists come out to exhibitions, collect each other's artworks, share resources and knowledge, and create opportunities through artist-run exhibition spaces, pop-ups, and community projects. Rhode Island artists are resourceful and resilient by necessity since there is little private or government investment in the arts across the state.”

 

The paintings and collages in Walsh’s show at Galerie le Domaine are all relatively modest in scale which makes them all the more appealing. They require that visitors get in close and interact. Walsh has a sensitive eye and hand and creates abstract works that are rich in subtleties. On a mantle in the gallery, an array of small mixed media works are on view, each with its own striking personality.

 

 

Asked what he hopes viewers take away from his current exhibition, Walsh points to the show title, saying, “The title of the exhibition is a line from the poem The Goness of Lost Things by the Canadian poet Don Domanksi. The poem weaves us into the great mystery of living in the world and our interconnectedness with invisible threads of time and nature. I hope my paintings evoke those invisible threads, a bit of mystery, a spark of recognition, and perhaps a lost memory of connection in the viewer.”

 

Walsh has a long exhibition record and has been the subject of past solo exhibitions locally at Gallery Agniel, 5 Traverse, and the Block Island Airport Gallery. He has also taken part in many group exhibitions and concurrently with his show at Galerie le Domaine also has two pieces featured in the NetWorks Exhibition at WaterFire Arts Center.

 

 

Numerous inspirations inform this painter’s work. Asked about influences, Walsh answers, “So many people, books, movies, and experiences influence my work as an artist. I will try to keep this brief and just to visual artists. My earliest inspirations are the painters Mark Rothko, Anslem Kiefer, Jay DeFeo, Wallace Berman, Robert Rauschenberg, and the Mono-Ha movement in Japan. Rebecca Solnit’s book Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era, was very influential. The exhibition High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975, curated by Katy Siegel introduced me to a diverse group of painters making experimental abstract paintings including: Jack Whitten, Harmony Hammond, Al Loving, Joan Snyder, and Blink Palermo. Some more recent artists and shows I have seen that have been inspiring include Sean Sullivan, Cecilia Vicuña, Frank Bowling, Teresa Baker, and Herbert Pfostl. Some local artists whose work that I have been looking at and thinking about include Edwige Charlot, Jason Travers, Jordan Seaberry, and Michelle Benoit.”

 

 

Walsh is a thoughtful artist who creates evocative and deeply felt work. The paintings in his solo show welcome viewers into new ways of seeing. In the art community, Walsh is widely regarded as a kind and sensitive gallerist - someone who works with artists to make their visions a reality. Asked about how his role at AS220 has informed his life, he states, “AS220 is the place that I became an artist, where I learned it was even possible that I could be an artist. As gallery director, I strive to be as welcoming and generous as the artists that first welcomed me to AS220 and shared their time and knowledge.”

 

 

Neal T. Walsh’s solo exhibition Our Days are Weatherworn will be on view at Galerie le Domaine at 173 Waterman Street in Providence through September 10. The gallery will be open from 5:30 - 7:30 pm on August 15 and other times by appointment. To schedule a viewing, contact Gallery Director Wini Lambrecht at 401.864.9006. Learn more about Neal T. Walsh at www.nealtwalsh.com.