Walter Bartman

Plein Air painter Walter Bartman is brightening North Market Street in Frederick, MD with his current exhibit at Gallery 322 (to 3/31), a site he shares with four other Yellow Barn artists and instructors. Mr. Bartman is the founder and president of the Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery (www.yellowbarnstudio.com) in Glen Echo, MD, former Montgomery County art teacher, and seasoned traveler as a frequent workshop leader for aspiring artists.

If you like color - and that is Mr. Bartman's specialty - you'll definitely want to check out this exhibition of about 30 oils. [Disclosure: I own three small works by the painter and, who knows, may add others.]

Scenes depicting rolling country pastures (the painter lives in nearby Braddock Heights), sea sides and waterways (he has a studio on the Eastern Shore), and snow covered fields adorn the well-lighted gallery spaces. Mr. Bartman is exhibiting some of his canvases from recent workshops and several winter scenes he executed while holed up during the recent snowstorms. He also has a few works with posed models which have that darkened, masked, or anonymous quality in their sitters suggestive of American Impressionists of earlier days.

I had an opportunity to chat with him prior to last week's opening. He said he responds to color subjectively. It's not a one-to-one correspondence of reality as he sees it; rather the representation is his emotional reaction to the scene. He likes to paint at night "capturing images when it's dark"), when the light is fading, and the final painting is truly transformed. He tends to favor abstract compositions in the mornings and evenings - sunrises and sunsets have a diametrically opposite character, the light's changed - while reserving the midday for his more representational work. He said, "I respond to scenes [emotionally] differently, at different times of the day."

He uses several techniques to achieve these effects, including palette knife, finer brush strokes in multiple compositions, and a wide brush application, which has an expressionistic, misty look reminiscent of his favorite landscape painter Wolf Kahn (Mr. Bartman greatly admires the artist). Mr. Kahn will be visiting The Yellow Barn in May to give a lecture and workshops. Collectors looking toward investment as well as beauty will have a chance to obtain some iconic works which have been reproduced as cards ("Great Falls Tavern"), posters ("Barnstormer") and as a circular for the present exhibit ("Lobster Obituaries"). But if you're just looking, as most were at the March 6 opening, you'll find plenty to please the eye.

See the Gallery 322 link above for additional information.