Rodger Walker

Rodger has just recently moved to the Southeast Costal plains of Texas (Seabrook, TX); an area where he spent most of youth. Leaving Florida after a two-year stay, the call to return home was over powering. Prior to giving Florida a try he and his wife and two little Chihuahuas moved to San Augustine FL to continue his Art Career. "Painting the state of Florida is more than a lifetime of work. I love the scenery there but I need to broaden my experiences by coming home and painting both my remembered experience and current scenes of the times. living in the Colorado Rockies for eight years, his other career (businessman and local entrepreneur) has afforded him the opportunity to live in various parts of the US.

Future plans of relocating are nonexistent. I do plan, however, to do some extended travel throughout the North West including western and maybe even the Maritimes in the eastern parts of Canada.

Rodger started his art education in grade school. He continued with drawing and charcoal lessons through out public school. Later, while attending the University of Texas where he majored in Architecture he again took up art and design as part of his class work. It was while at the University that he met many Arab students and was in demand as a portrait painter (charcoal and pastels) as a result all of his early portrait work is now hanging in the Middle East. He worked in the Dallas Advertising market as an in house artist and later freelance artist for three years, and like so many young people in the early ‘60s, marriage and children was encouragement enough to change careers. After a long and successful business career, Rodger took an early retirement because of some health problems. During his business career, he was never far from his first love of oil/acrylic painting and sculpting. Rodger completed several art commissions during his business career with the goal that someday, some how he would become a full time artist. That dream has finally come true.

All though he had art training at various stages of his life, he, never the less considers himself as being a self-taught artist. “I’ve always felt pretty confident that I could do most things in art, when I didn’t know how to do something in particular like ceramic mold making, for example, I would always go to the “expert” in that area and learn everything I could to become competent in that field”. “I have had the good fortune of being exposed to many good contemporary artist`s works which have had a great influence me”. “My artistic direction for the time being is representative painting in oils, acrylics and watercolor. I equally divided between en plein aire and studio work”.

He is a member of the St. Augustine Art Association as well a member in the First Coast Plein Air Painter of Florida (FCPAP).

The subjects that most appeal to him are broad based with a tilt toward marine art, lighthouses, old architecture and landscapes. “Because I’ve lived from coast to coast and many places in between, I naturally have an affinity for subjects of all sorts but marine work is my favorite”.