Carol Walter
At the age of five, I Loved to draw, if it wasn’t horses it was a family member relaxing on a Sunday afternoon, or the landscape of Thorpe’s cabin up in Liberty. At the age of 8 or 9 years old, I had gotten a paint by number paint set for Christmas of some horses. Thinking I could do this without the numbers, by using my own creativity. This is what introduced me to oil for my future medium. My early teens, a neighbor of ours, Kelly and Nina Kukes asked me to come up with a design for their gift apple crates. Label was called THE LITTLE APPLE KNOCKER. It was a picture of one of their children up in a apple tree. 2001, I entered two of my oil paintings at the Kittitas County Fair. One of the Walton barn off Badger Pocket Rd, I had added an old International truck to the foreground, that painting won show champion. Second painting was the Thorp Prairie with a barn and an old Fertilizer spreader on the Bruketta farm, won special award. I was so overwhelmed and pleased to see that. 2012, I may had not won any Ribbons at the fair that year, but I had won the hearts of a family that loved my painting, it was a painting of the 2010 Ellensburg Parade with and old flat bed truck with wooden racks and a large white dog hanging his head out the window in front of the old Grand Central theater, on the corner of 3rd and Pearl st. The family noticed they were in the painting along with their nana, Grandma and was overwhelmed to see that. They always had a family get together on Labor Day weekend, so that painting was special to them. My ideas for my paintings is usually from my photo’s I had taken. Old farm steads, the Kittitas Valley or some event that had horses pulling old implement and disking the field, where it pulls you back into the pass and remembering some of the stories of what our great grandparents had to endure. It gives you that sense of simpleness and hard times of history. I’m a self taught artist, through books or watching artist program on TV. I’m very meticulous of my paintings and it also give time for myself to enjoy what I love to do.
