Fare thee well, Ron Walotsky

Ron Walotsky's death shattered many people in the fantasy art world.

Here, Paul Barnett, 'Nest columnist and editor of art book imprint Paper Tiger fondly remembers his friend, and there's his posthumous interview with Ron too.

Ron Walotsky 1943-2002

I suppose in a way we'd all three-quarters expected the news, but when it finally came it shattered many people in the fantasy art world and well outside it.

Artist Ron Walotsky died at about midnight on the night of July 29/30, aged only 58 or 59 - no one seems to be quite sure. The art of the fantastic had lost one of its finest modern practitioners; I, and countless others, had lost a very dear friend.

He was born in Brooklyn and trained at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, graduating in 1966.

These circumstances made him both a lifelong lover of New York (even though he was forced by illness to live in Florida during his latter years, because New York was quite literally too cold for him, that love never waned) and a man who was very much a product of the 1960s; he often joked with me that that decade was little more than a blur in his memory, which proved that he'd enjoyed it the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

His art, too, retained forever a sort of 1960s sensibility. Some of his earliest commissions were day-glo posters iconizing Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, and just glancing at then calls up visual memories of Oz, International Times and all the pneumatically lettered psychedelic album sleeves that filled the record stores of the day.

In many of even his final works, whether cover illustrations or fine art, there was still the lingering suspicion of psychedelia in the use of color, in the composition, in the delicious tendency to stray into surrealism, in the obsession with masks.

Surrealism was his first love on leaving art college, but the sidewalks of Manhattan were at the time clogged thick with jostling wannabe neo-surrealist artists, and he was sensible enough to realize that trying to compete against this tidal wave would offer nothing more than a quick road to food stamps.

He had to start earning himself a living by doing commercial work. His big break came when he was commissioned by Ed Ferman to paint the cover for the May 1967 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, illustrating a story by Phyllis Gotlieb called "Planetoid Idiot".

Over the years he would paint well over fifty covers for that magazine, and during a certain period of the 1970s it was hard to distinguish, in one's mind's eye, between the ethos of F&SF's fiction and the Walotsky artistic vision, so much did his covers seem an integral part of the rest.

His first book cover commission - for Wyman Guin's Living Way Out, published by Avon - came in the same year, and thereafter the book commissions came thick and fast until about the middle of the 1990s, when, as fantasy and science fiction book publishers turned more and more for their cover illustrations towards a high-sheen uniformity that is effectively anonymity, the quirky, very fantasticated, surreally tinged, overwhelmingly individualistic Walotsky style fell from favor.

In the last few years of his life he was rather grubbing around for work - a fact that, though bad for his bank balance, had the very considerable advantage that he had more time to concentrate on his splendid fine art.

The book of his work, Inner Visions, published in 2000, contains a small selection of his fine art; that it did not contain a larger selection was entirely due to an overzealous publishing executive who convinced herself that readers of the book would be too unsophisticated to appreciate such stuff. Even in this much-abbreviated assortment, however, it is possible to see the two main directions in which his unfettered visual imagination took him.

First there were the abstract and semi-abstract paintings, strongly flavored by surrealism and also, he claimed, much influenced by his interest in eastern religions. Many of these works fell into his long Children series, in which fairly realistic portrayals of children were cast into surrealistic surrounds, enhancing the surreality while at the same time often creating an odd, ineffable sense of invisible menace.

And second there were the painted horseshoe crab shell masks. These have to be seen to be fully understood. He started doing them when he was living on the beach in New York. As he wrote in Inner Visions: Among my fellow habitues of the beach were all these horseshoe crabs.

These creatures molt, leaving their old shells behind. I got into the habit of taking shells and other beachcombings I found back to my home. One day I was looking at one of the shells and the image of a face and helmet just materialized before me. The next morning there were thousands of horseshoe crab shells lying on the beach, and I took this as a sign. I have no idea how many of these shells Ron fastidiously painted as the masks of what he called the "Ancient Warriors from Lost Civilizations," but there must have been dozens, probably scores, possibly more even than that.

Each is different, not just because of the different shapes of the shells but because Ron saw in each shell an individual "personality" which he then developed so that the shell became a mask that conveyed the nature of the otherwise undefined person behind it.

Any one of these masks on its own has an uncanniness - a feeling of enormous swathes of unknown history going all the way back to primordial times - that is impossible to appreciate from a photograph; seen collectively, as he exhibited them in convention art shows and the like, the masks convey an enormous sense of presence, as if, should you look away for a moment, they might start slowly and silently bobbing, speaking wordlessly to each other.

For a year or more before his death, Ron and I had been talking rather lackadaisically about doing a book together, using perhaps fifty of the masks as both illustrations and a springboard for an accompanying novella which I would write. There were two reasons for the somewhat lethargic nature of our conversations on this.

One was that we knew with certainty that any publisher would look at all the different, individualistic masks and immediately say: "But they're all the same." The other was that we thought we had all the time in the world. Which, of course, we didn't. What I am now hoping to do is assemble a dozen or so fellow writers, each to use one of Ron's horseshoe crab masks as the springboard for a story to which the mask would form a frontispiece.

In that way, perhaps, we could find a publisher and thereby provide, aside from sorely needed funds for Ron's estate, a permanent record of this aspect of the creativity of a remarkably creative artist.

I get the impression that all of us working in or associated with the fantasy art world somehow undervalued Ron's work while he was alive. In part this was due to his immense popularity and sociability - it is hard to keep remembering that the guy propping up the bar next to you and sharing laughter (so, so much laughter) is actually a very specially gifted creative genius.

This underappreciation extended into the arena of the field's awards: Ron was nominated for Chesleys, Hugos and World Fantasy Awards, but not nearly as often as his work deserved . . . and he never won one, even though some of the relevant paintings remain forever ineradicably imprinted on the mind in a way that their successful rivals of the time often do not.

Perhaps, now that this very dear friend of so many people has gone from us, we can come to our collective senses and do something to rectify the injustice.

Ron, we loved you. Farewell, ol' buddy.

This is obit. is reprinted courtesy Crescent Blues over at www.crescentblues.com

WALOTSKY UP, DOC?

PS: You're not long back from the 2000 World SF Convention in Chicago, where of course your stand was one of the art show's foci of attention. How did you enjoy the convention as a whole? Indeed, how do you enjoy conventions in general?

RW: I had a good one in Chicago. For me conventions offer one of the only times you get to talk to other artists and see old friends as well as meet other artists whose work I've known but never met - like Chris Moore and Fred Gambino.

It's always good to talk to artists with different backgrounds and find out how much you have in common. I've been going to cons only since the 1980 WorldCon, even though I've been in the field since 1967.

My first ten years I wasn't even aware of sf cons, then Ed Ferman from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction told me about them, so I went along. I'd had no idea people were that interested in cover art. Someone had actually brought about forty covers of mine to sign at that con. Been going ever since.

PS: Your very first commission was for a cover illustration for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 'way back in 1967, and you've done over forty more covers for that magazine since - an astonishing record. Why the particular affinity for F&SF?

RW: In 1967 I went to the F&SF office in New York City after deciding that Ed Ferman might be interested in my work. I was just out of art school and I looked just like you could imagine. Ed was a rather conservative young man then, but he took a shot and that's how we started.

I think it's about 55 covers I've now done for Ed and F&SF. I've had a wonderful relationship with him ever since. There's times in this business when things will slow down for a while, but Ed has always had a cover for me. In the early days he would send me a cheque if I needed it even before the art was done.

So I did build up a kind of loyalty to F&SF, although for quite a while I've done covers for Asimov's, Analog and Amazing Stories. But from the start I've only missed one year of doing a cover for F&SF.

PS: Aside from F&SF, the other immediate connection people make when thinking about your career in the long term is with the late Roger Zelazny, and in particular with his Amber series. How did that come about?

RW: I was working for Avon books in the late 1960s with Barbara Bartolli, the Art Director at that time. She had a tough reputation but for some reason we hit it off. She had a manuscript for Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny, I hadn't heard about him before. Lord of Light was a book that caught a feeling of the time, the emotion.

It had a big effect on me. We decided to make the image like a small jewel in a black background. I was so taken with this book that I sent Roger the original painting of the cover. He called me to let me know that he put it up in his office in Santa Fe. We kept in touch through the years until he passed away. But, getting back to the covers.

After Lord of Light there was Creatures of Light and Darkness. This was a time that I was into yoga and transcendental meditation. I went to Madison Square Gardens to see the Maharishi with some friends in the organization and ended up going to the Maharishi's suite in the hotel afterwards to hear him talk.

There were about twenty-five people and I sat on the floor next to Allen Ginsberg. Roger's books tapped into this area for me. For Creatures of Light and Darkness we wanted to do the same look - black covers, white type, and a small illustration in the centre.

The Amber books all kept the same format. I think they went through fifteen printings over fifteen years before they changed the covers, because they were so recognizable. I even put a section in my book Inner Visions on Roger.

PS: All through the years you've continued to practise as a Fine Artist alongside your illustration work - and indeed there are some who prefer your abstracts and semi-abstracts even above your illustrations, which is saying a lot. Do you ever feel the urge to take the plunge and make a second professional career as a Fine Artist?

RW: My early background was in fine art. I've always had gallery shows of the work I do for myself, abstract or illusionist art. I originally became an artist to paint what I felt. The illustration work was the bread and butter.

Priorities kinda reversed themselves, but nevertheless I've always done paintings for myself. At times I've had the galleries not want my F&SF illustrations with my abstract work, but I've felt that juxtapositions like that show the artist's range. Galleries still have a separation between illustration and fine art.

To me, there is no longer a distinction. The art and its quality should be the criteria, not the subject matter. So much of what they consider fine art now was illustration back then, anyway. But I think now the lines are beginning to blur.

PS: Especially noteworthy among your semi-abstracts is the longish "Children" series. What brought this on? Did the idea just come to you, or had you done several paintings in the series before you realized it was becoming a series?

RW: I started the "Children" series in 1998. I had illustrated two children's books, The Crystal Palace of Adonis and Nana, Grandpa, and Tecumseh. I was doing my illusionist, abstract work at about that time. I'm not sure how they merged.

The idea of putting children, with their sense of the unknown, within the abstract spaces seemed to be an interesting juxtaposition for me. The paintings look rather innocent, but I think there's a darker side to some of them. I've so far done a series of twelve paintings and I may do more. The paintings kind of pushed their way out. I usually do not have a sketch when I start them.

They create themselves while I'm painting, so I'm as surprised at the final outcome as anyone else would be!

PS: I suppose the inevitable next question must be, to round out this probing of the origins of the various major strands in your career: How did it come about that you chose to go into illustration, and in particular fantasy/sf illustration?

RW: Well, I had to figure out how to make a living as an artist. I was doing mystical paintings in the 1960s. For a job, at that time, it seemed you had to be either a teacher or a carpenter.

I started doing psychedelic posters with Dream Merchants Poster Company and the Third Eye Poster Co. I always enjoyed reading F&SF. It offered the closest way to my ideal: making a living and painting what I enjoyed without a lot of input from others.

PS: From conversation with you, it's obvious that the Sixties were a great time for you. Do you remember much about them? Or to you subscribe to the credo that if you can remember the Sixties you didn't really enjoy them?

RW: It's just a purple haze. Only partly joking. I was doing day-glo posters for Dream Merchants and they were on Green Street in New York's SoHo. I made posters of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Joe Cocker and a few other images from that time.

I had to cut the "ruby lith", which is a red screen with a red film on it. You cut out the areas where you want paint on the silk screens. I used to hang out on 8th Street in the East Village - there was a lot of energy, and it seemed anything was possible.

You questioned everything and looked at the government and its war objectives in a very negative way. Andy Warhol had a club in a building called the Dom, and they used to put on "happenings" there.

It was a Polish Club, so I can just imagine what they thought. I still have people come up to me who have those old posters.

PS: Does music continue to play a large part in, for want of a less pompous phrase, your creative inspiration?

RW: I love music. The first record I ever bought was "Hound Dog" by Elvis Presley when it first came out. In the 1950s, when I lived in Brooklyn, the kids would sing in the subway station because of the echo. I enjoy almost any kind of music while I work, usually classic rock or classical, but jazz and Latin are cool too.

PS: You came from New York and you spent much of your life there. What brought about the move to Florida? And do you ever hanker to move back to the Apple?

RW: I was living in Atlantic Beach, NY, until 1991. The main reason was the cold; I just didn't take to it any more. I needed to stay by the ocean, though. My son Lennon was living in Flagler Beach, Florida, and he convinced me to move down. It was a small town with a 1950-ish flavour. I don't miss living in New York very often but it will always be in my blood.

PS: You're very well known for your covers, but Walotsky interior illustrations - colour frontispieces aside - are comparatively thin on the ground. Was this a conscious career choice, or have you just always been more of a painter than a line artist?

RW: This was never a conscious choice. I never was asked to do many b/w interiors, although I do enjoy doing pen-and-ink work. I think people thought of me more as a painter.

PS: Clearly you must read a lot of fantasy and science fiction in the course of doing your illustration work. But what books do you turn to when you're not reading professionally, as it were?

RW: I don't seem to read many books other than the manuscripts I'm working on. I guess I lean more towards magazines and periodicals like Art News, Smithsonian House, the Sunday Times, USA Today, Focus and SF Chronicle.

PS: Let's extend this. If you had to choose a single book to illustrate - let's go the whole hog and say not just the cover but as many colour interiors as you'd wish - which book do you think that would be?

RW: Maybe Lord of the Rings. Something with a lot of visual fantasy. Or Dante's Inferno.

PS: Any is there any one book you've illustrated that you've always yearned to go back and do again?

RW: That's hard to say. Once I did a cover that I realized I wanted to change but had already sent in. I called the publisher to return it but they were very satisfied with it and didn't send the artwork back until after the book was published.

When I got it back I made the changes anyway - I couldn't just put it away. A couple of other times I've changed paintings after I've gotten them back.

PS: You're rare among fantasy/sf illustrators in that you haven't yet begun to experiment with the computer as an artistic tool - indeed, at the present you have yet even to buy yourself a computer at all. Is this a conscious artistic decision, or is the computer simply something you haven't yet gotten around to?

RW: Ah, the computer. To be honest, it's a tool and I'm going to end up getting one out of necessity. There are a lot of artists using them these days and I do get a lot of e-mail.

A friend of mine, Art Phaneuf, takes care of my e-mail and I think it's time I stopped bothering him with it so he can do his own work. It's just always looked like the frustration level is too high with computers!

Also, the finished product is very different. Paintings always have a very personal connection to me but prints will sometimes seem to have a coldness to them. But, who knows, maybe I'll become addicted.

PS: Having seen your art on display, not just in convention art shows but, in printed form, in your book Inner Visions, I'm perfectly aware that you work in a diversity of styles. At the same time there's a definite continuity: Walotsky illustrations tend to have a distinctive autographic feel to them.

But of all your major illustrations - and there are many - there's one that stands out as being entirely unlike the rest, so that unless people are told they're unlikely to realize it's by you. I'm referring of course to your stunning cover for The Crow: Shattered Lives, Broken Dreams. As you say in Inner Visions, you wanted to keep the image pretty simple and yet it turned out to be a visually fairly complex piece. Could you talk us through that, please?

RW: Ed Kramer asked me to illustrate one of the short stories for his anthology The Crow: Shattered Lives, Broken Dreams. There are almost thirty short stories in the book, each featuring a crow in some form or other.

I saw that Alan Dean Foster had a story in there. We've been friends for quite some time and I'd never illustrated any of his work before. The story had a crow in it but the main thrust of the story was about switching souls.

The actual painting is of a crow coming at you, like through a wall, and its shadow is on the wall. What makes this one interesting is that the crow and the shadow merge to become a mask and the negative space between the shadows of the head and wings are two faces looking at each other.

It's just a crow but there's a triple image there. It originally wasn't to be used for the cover but they chose it.

A lot of the mystery covers I've done have been rather simple images, like for Red Dragon by Thomas Harris and Sphinx by Robin Cook.

PS: Looking at your paintings, I've often thought, for some reason I cannot readily identify, that you're an artist whose style would seem ideal for murals. Have you ever thought of venturing into that field?

RW: I would love to do some large murals but just haven't gotten any commissions for them. The largest painting I ever did was for a Billy Joel video called Until the Night was Young. It was 30ft x 40ft and I had to paint it in three days.

They rented a nightclub called The World in the East Village in New York. It had a balcony and I laid the canvas on the floor and then had to run upstairs to see what it looked like. It was done in three days. Three long days. I would hope to have more time if I ever again do something on that scale.

PS: So far we've been looking back on your long and distinguished career, so let's turn around and look forward. Are there any major projects, exhibitions, etc., on the horizon? Any further big surprises that Ron Walotsky is going to spring on the world in the near future?

RW: I'll be having a show at the David Cutter gallery in St Augustine about the end of the year. Otherwise I'll just be doing my own painting, illustrating, making masks and cards - I've just finished fifteen cards for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. But, as Monty Python says, "Now for something completely different!"

PS: Ron Walotsky, thank you very much - and an extra thankyou to Art and Diane for making this interview possible.

A version of this interview originally appeared in The Snarl, Paper Tiger’s reader zine. Many thanks to the Snarl’s Editor extraordinaire, Paul Barnett (www.papertiger.co.uk), for letting us recycle their prose.

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