The Garden of Goods Galleries

Robert Alan Waltsak, New Jersey landscape painter, draws inspiration from the work of the Hudson River School. The palette he uses was originally developed in the 1800's by Frank Vincent Dumond.

Waltsak studied at the Newark School of Fine Arts, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and Ridgewood Art Institute in New Jersey. His award winning paintings are held in private and corporate collections. They have been featured in the Ridgewood Art Institute Jury Show and exhibited at the Hastings on Hudson Museum.

Although Waltsak has won a lot of awards for painting, he is most proud of those times when he can, as he puts it, “achieve nature”. He tries to make observers of his paintings feel as though they are really there at an ephemeral moment. He says, “That's what I try to do, but it's very hard. You almost never get there. To capture the light, the highest light, during the morning sun coming up. It's there for an instant and moves so fast. And the sun going down. You've seen the light on the lake. I try to capture that. It's only there for a few seconds. Most people don't even see it. But the more you paint, the more you are outside, the more you see. I don't see leaves, branches, and twigs. I see the mass value, the darks, the lights. And that's what I try to paint.”

Today there are very few artists who try to go out and paint plein aire the way Robert Waltsak does. He tries to make people stop as they walk by one of his paintings, to make them look into the painting and see its statement, to make them stay in the painting. He believes that it is the depths and heights, the darks and lights, that make them stay in, and that is what he tries to achieve.

Although Waltsak is prolific (he paints rapidly, and for as much as four straight hours a day), he is careful not to paint too much, believing that he needs air and space so as not to drain himself. His many enthusiastic fans feel that he has this balance just right, and look forward to seeing him continue to produce his visually stunning and gripping portraits of nature.