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As an interdisciplinary artist, I follow threads connecting my artistic intentions to this beautiful world, people, and purpose in life. These tangible and ephemeral ties manifest in visual art, books, and music. As a painter, I work in oil on canvas, monotype printmaking, drawing, and mixed media. My affinity for environment began in my childhood in Kansas—swimming in pools, fashioning houses of lawn clippings into houses to play in with my sister, or traveling with my family by car to beaches and cities, canyons and mountains. Since moving to California in 1977, I have been investigating a vocabulary inspired by nature and movement, while seeking resonance with an inner landscape.
This website includes a retrospective—paintings spanning from the 1980s, when I absorbed contemporary dance and the rhythms of urban life and natural landscapes into my work, to the 1990s, when I dug deeply into an intimate cultivated annual garden and then a perennial garden and wilder habitats, to the 2000s, when I painted the garden with greater abandon, to the 2010s, when I move from home to high above during travels as a visual facilitator, keeping my artist mind nourished by sketching the earth and sky from my airplane window seat.
When in Sonoma County, the garden and landscapes outside my studio walls continue to be fertile inspiration. I sketch or photograph in nature and revisit these images in the studio. To begin a painting, I may pluck a reference palette—petals, leaves, pods, grasses. Then I follow forms and colors until the painting or something—music, memory, currents of feelings and thoughts—suggests the next move.
Artists work through their influences in order to achieve a distinctive voice. My oil paintings and monotypes are a surrender and response to those influences, wherever they reside in me. The Chinese word for painter is formed from the characters for head, hand, and heart. Each wants to direct. One or the other shouts loudest. The hope is for a harmony of the three, a chorus of instinct when in front of the canvas.
Painting an odd calling, after all, especially in a world dazzled by fast-paced media. What compels an artist to work alone in the belief that the marks she makes will matter? For me, it is for those moments when head, hand, and heart join together.
About the monotypes
My monotypes are traces of movement and gesture, control and release—a synchronicity of accident and intention. In any given session, I explore variations suggested by the interaction of the natural materials and the printmaking process. In my most recent series, I’ve been working with long curling grasses from my garden. I love the spontaneous and resilient arabesques drawn by nature.
Monotypes are unique prints made by pressing paper against an inked plate. A second print, pulled from the same plate, is called a ghost. A print may be run through the press several times to build layers of imagery, thus a ghost may be reminiscent of its master, but have a different sensibility. The process of making monotypes is full of surprises, and more discoveries reside in the final print.
- Born: 1948 Kansas City, Missouri
- San Francisco, California: 1977 -1994
- Sonoma County, California: 1994 - current
- 2006 MFA Writing and Literature in Fiction, Bennington College, VT
- 1980 MA Creative Arts Interdisciplinary, San Francisco State University, CA
- 1973-75 Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
- 1970 BFA University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Education
Christine Walker is a painter and writer. She began making art in childhood and, since 1974, has been exhibiting her paintings and prints in galleries, museums, and corporate collections. Her works on paper are represented by Andrea Schwartz Gallery in San Francisco.
She was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1948, and was raised in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. She came to San Francisco in 1977, where she ran a design business and made paintings of people moving in environments—pedestrians, swimmers—and of images from islands and wild landscapes. In 1990 she began growing a small urban garden as subject matter for her art, and in 1994 she moved with her family to Sonoma County, where a perennial garden and surrounding landscape profoundly influenced her painting. She continues to be inspired by nature—earth, sky, and water.
Her book, A Painter’s Garden: Cultivating the Creative Life (Warner, 1997) was inspired by her journal/sketchbooks, which document her inquiries into creative process, and by gardening, which provides a metaphoric framework for the essays. Illustrated with her paintings and drawings, the book was reviewed as “Intelligent, evocative, elegant, and articulate...the parallels between lessons in the garden, the studio, and life ring true...” (Eleanor Coppola, filmmaker, author) and “...you can almost run your fingers through the richness of experience, insight, and caring that makes art and beauty possible...” (Sonoma County Independent). Christine is also the illustrator and co-author of Wooleycat’s Musical Theater, (Tortuga Press, 2003) a children’s book with song CD, and of Nature Maestro, educational apps.
Christine has a BFA from the University of Kansas, an MA in Creative Arts Interdisciplinary from San Francisco State University, and an MFA in Writing and Literature in Fiction from Bennington College in Vermont. She is married to composer Dennis Hysom and they have an adult son, Quinn. She lives in Sebastopol, California.
- Born: 1948 Kansas City, Missouri
- San Francisco, California: 1977 -1994
- Sonoma County, California: 1994 - current
- chris@christinewalker.net
- www.christinewalker.net
- 2006 MFA Writing and Literature in Fiction, Bennington College, VT
- 1980 MA Creative Arts Interdisciplinary, San Francisco State University, CA
- 1973-75 Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
- 1970 BFA University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
- 2010 Entwined by Nature, Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael, CA (3-person show)
- 2004 Abandoned Gardens, Rogue Community College, Grants Pass, OR
- 2001 Abandoned Gardens, 45 Fremont Building, San Francisco, CA
- 2000 The Orchard Drawings, studio exhibition, Sebastopol, CA
- 1998 A Painter's Garden, AirTouch Communications, Walnut Creek, CA
- 1997 A Painter's Garden, Niebaum-Coppola Winery, Rutherford, CA
- 1996 Fertile Ground, The Quicksilver Mine Company Gallery, Sebastopol, CA
- 1995 A Painter's Garden, Sun Cities Art Museum, Sun City, AZ
- 1990 Pedestrians, 201 Convention Plaza, San Francisco, CA
- 1986 Island Songs, Bank of America Plaza Gallery, San Francisco, CA Harbors, Zephyr Gallery, San Francisco, CA
- 1980 Swimmers, New Performance Gallery, San Francisco, CA
- 1978 Off-Hand Gestures, New Performance Gallery, San Francisco, CA
- 2003-09 Auberge du Soleil Gallery, I Wolk Gallery, St. Helena, CA
- 2005 Guest Artist, Graton Gallery, Graton, California
- 2003 Quicksilver Mine Company Gallery, Forestville, CA
- 2003 Fortune, Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County Gallery, Santa Rosa, CA
- 2001 SFMOMA Artists Gallery program, San Francisco, CA
- 2000 Trees, Quicksilver Mine Company Gallery, Sebastopol, CA
- 1998 City Life, 425 Market Street Gallery—The Shorenstein Co., San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery, San Francisco, CA - 1997 Garden Impressions, Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto and San Jose, CA
- 1996 Linked by Gesture, Downtown Dance/Art Space, Sebastopol, CA
Landscapes, Quicksilver Mine Company Gallery, Sebastopol, CA
Big Fruit & Big Flowers, Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County, State Building, Santa Rosa, CA - 1994 Art as Food for the Eyes, Student Union Art Gallery, San Francisco State University, SF, CA
- 1992 Gump's Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Art in Embassies program, U.S. Department of State - 1991 Gump's Gallery, San Francisco, CA
- 1990 Viewing Landscapes, Gump's Gallery, San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Earth Day, South Bay Green Alliance, San Jose State University, CA
Group Show, Synopsis, Mountain View, CA
Bay Area Artists, 3 Com, Santa Clara, CA - 1989 Bay Area Artists, Cadence Design Systems, San Jose, CA
Faber Birren Color Award Show, 9th Annual, Stamford Art Assoc., Stamford, CT, Juror: Charlotta Kotik Kimball’s East / Benefit Family House, Kimball’s East Jazz Club, Emeryville, CA - 1987 Group Show, Zephyr Gallery, San Francisco, CA
- 1986 Three Painters, Yorkville Vineyards, Yorkville, CA
- 1985 Bathers, Olive Hyde Gallery, Fremont, CA
- 1982-86 San Francisco Open Studio, San Francisco, CA, solo shows in studio
- 1984 Great Gifts in Small Packages, San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, SF, CA
- 1981 Three Painters, Xerox Research Center, Palo Alto, CA San Francisco Open Studio, S.F., CA, solo show in studio & juried show San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery Program, SF, CA
- 1977 Women Artists ‘77, University of Missouri Kansas City Art Gallery, KC, MO
Juror: Miriam Shapiro
30 Miles of Art, Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, MO
- 1974 Plaza Art Fair, Kansas City, MO
- BankAmerica Corporate Art Collection, San Francisco, CA
- Kaiser Permanente, Hayward and Union City, CA
- Merrill Lynch, Los Angeles, CA
- Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Palo Alto, CA
- Seward & Kissel, New York, NY
- The Woodsmall Insurance Companies, Kansas City, MO
- Apax Partners, Menlo Park, CA
- Charles Schwab, Palo Alto, CA
- Wright, Robinson, Osthimer & Tatum, San Francisco, CA
- A Painter's Garden: Cultivating the Creative Life, Warner Books, 1997
- Wooleycat's Musical Theater, Tortuga Press, 2003
- Andrea Schwartz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
