Waller Austin

Waller H Austin

This is my first post…thank you for visiting…

My name is Waller Huntsberry Austin.

I was born Wednesday November 4th 1981 in Durham North Carolina to my parents Dr. Erle Harris Austin and Mrs. Scott Dabney Austin.

Today I reside in Louisville Kentucky with my wife Whitney Blaine Austin and our two german shorthaired pointers Duke and Dutch.

I am an outsider artist; I have no formal art training or experience.

I have always loved to draw and just recently got into painting.

”Time out” for me as a child seemed like eternity. My mother would put me into my father’s study at home which lacked any fun value and I would spend much of my time rummaging through his things. Though there were no toys in his office there were stacks of books, papers, pens, and pencils.

My father is a world renowned pediatric cardiovascular surgeon. Otherwise known as a doctor… but not just any doctor…he is quite an academic… a scholar at a young age, he attended Dartmouth for his undergraduate degrees, Harvard for medical school, and then Duke for an eleven year residency.

If this tells you anything about expectations in my family you have no doubt already prejudged me as a failure.

Getting back to my “time out” story, were it not for medical illustrations in my father’s textbooks I would not be the artist I am today.

My mother loves telling the story of how she came to my kindergarten class on Valentines Day to read a story and hand out candy. All of my classmates had embellished their trick-or-treat bags ornately with pink and red and white ribbons, lace candy. Cute stuff…

She could not find my creation on the shelf with the other boys and girls candy bags, so she asked the teacher where my bag was.

“Waller’s bag scared the other children so we put it up.” She proceeded to pull my masterpiece out from under her desk, and my mom was shocked to see a blue and red crayon-sketched human heart labeled with r ventricle, l ventricle, aorta, and atrial ventricular node.

I have been pushing the envelope ever since.

My parents realized that I was a gifted illustrator at a very young age and purchased an artist’s graphing table for me when I was 10 years old.

I stopped creating art when I was 14 years old because I hated the art teacher at my school.

Although my mom urged me to apply to art school I laughed it off. I knew I was talented but I could never see myself earning a buck for the work that I did.

I ended up getting a degree in psychology from the University of Louisville.

Along the way I dated a girl who went to school in Ohio. We went to an art show one day in Cincinnati featuring a painting by Chuck Close. Being the egoist I am, I said to her, “yeah I could have done that.” She responded with something to the effect of, “No, you aren’t talented enough.” So I said “you’re on” and I began painting a color portrait of Christine in the style of Chuck Close.

As it happens Christine and I broke up a few months later and the piece was never completed. Not only did I not want to stare at my ex-girlfriend’s face for another 200 hours to complete the process, but I also felt like I was imitating another artist to the point that it was almost a copy of his work. I had read an in an interview that Close has seen pieces of his own work that he doesn’t even remember doing. And I don’t want my work to be that closely associated with another artist…no pun intended.

A friend saw my half finished painting of Christine and would not leave me alone until I painted a picture of him and his grand father.

Since painting Cordt & Owsley in 2008 I have completed one other work, Muhammad Ali. And I am currently working on an Albert Einstein

So I am still developing my style.

RIght now I am painting portraits from photographs by organizing abstractions into a pattern that resembles real things or people.

Instead of using circles within circles, I try to find other geometric shapes to play off throughout the piece while attempting to be random at the same time. Though my compositions are made of simple shapes I spend plenty of time starring at each cell of the gridded photograph before I decide on what I see and how to represent it.

I also like to paint recognizable people.

I do not use a computer program to design or lay out my paintings.

My paintings are 100% intuitive. I put an excessive amount of effort into each work of art. This process allows for a certain amount of error that one’s eye naturally corrects. The details are precise and vague at the same time.

My work is like a Herman’s grid with a touch of Picasso.