Portrait of an Artist – Marly Walters: Natural talent, natural high

My art keeps me positive. In fact, whenever I’m painting I get a rush that’s as good as any drug. It’s a natural high. – Marly Walters

 

By TIM WILCOX
Special to the Alpine Mountaineer

What can we say about the senior member of the Mountain Arts Network (MAN)? Well, for starters, Marly Walters is a gifted, widely collected watercolorist and mixed-media artist. She’s been exhibiting her works at the MAN gallery in Lake Arrowhead Village since it opened on May 10, 2010. And next month she’ll celebrate her 89^th birthday.

“I don’t mind admitting my age,” she insists with a ready smile. “In fact, I’m proud of still being so self-sufficient and doing almost everything on my own. I’m just not into thinking old!” This declaration carries even more weight when you learn that Marly herself has done a lot of interior-renovation work on her Crestline home and even fixes her own appliances.

Still, her lifelong independence was threatened during the last two years when Marly lost much of her sight. “I wasn’t able to drive or do my artwork, which was very frustrating, of course,” she shares. Fortunately, cataract surgery was successful and, after jumping through innumerable hoops for the Department of Motor Vehicles, Marly is driving again. She’s also returning to what she loves most: her artwork.

The artist was born in Costa Mesa but grew up in Glendale. “I came from a creative, inventive, do-it-yourself family,” she says. Her older brother, Bill, was a champion tennis player, while her younger brother, Ed, excelled at snow skiing. “I loved to ski, too,” she says, “but I wasn’t a natural like he was.”

Marly’s father was a specialist in neon technology. And her mother? “She was a dress designer,” Marly responds, adding that “at the age of 5 I began drawing and eventually tried to copy her fashion illustrations. Then, in high school, I was encouraged by my teachers and friends to pursue art.”

Obviously talented with significant potential, Marly won a scholarship to the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, which is now part of CalArts. While that was an honor, the grant wasn’t sufficient to cover living expenses. So Marly bowed to practical pressures and went to work. For a while she was an au pair for a young family. Then for many years she served as a waitress at various eateries.

“During that time, I was always motivated to paint, first with oils and then acrylics,” Marly says. “So I couldn’t go to art school, but I was driven to do something with my art. I bought all sorts of books and actually had my own art school.” Quite a few years later, in the 1980s, one reward for her focus and determination was admission to the oh, so picky Los Angeles Art Association. 

Shifting esthetic gears

When a friend told her, “You’re painting too tight; you need to loosen up,” Marly shifted esthetic gears. She connected with a laidback artist in Santa Monica who was mentoring a small group of people in inks and watercolors. Keith Finch was an abstract painter who, in Marly’s words, “had a big influence on me.” She took classes and bought books from him. Another artist, Charles Reed, fortified her interest in abstract painting with watercolors.

Still, art remained a fulfilling avocation for Marly, who kept working. For a while she operated her own hair salon. Then she met Robert Altman – the renowned film director, screenwriter and producer – who took a liking to Marly and opened an exclusive salon for her in his suite of offices. “I honestly didn’t know that much about him,” Marly confesses, “and I wasn’t at all star-struck.”

That changed when she was hired by Fox Studios in the mid-’80s to work in its fledgling information-technology department. Marly reveals that, on that colorful and historic site, “one person made a really strong impression on me: Sean Connery. He was handsome and charming, and I loved his English accent.”

Her position with Fox in Studio City lasted for 13 years. There she was a computer tech who also “produced fliers and directories while handling phones and credit-card transactions. It was a lot different things.”

‘Friendly, small-town atmosphere’

Marly had lived and worked in the big city for many years. So when she retired from Fox Studios in 1999, she was drawn to the “friendly, small-town atmosphere” of Crestline. Discovering just the right home on a hill above Lake Gregory, she was finally able to focus on her art.

“When I first moved to the mountains, I painted a lot of trees and little cabins,” Marly says. “It got to the point where I couldn’t bring myself to paint another tree and remembered how much fun I had in the ’70s painting abstracts. I’d discovered a video by George James about YUPO paper, which has a smooth, white plastic surface. It allows the watercolors to sit on top and dries into a clean, vibrant layer of color.”

The artist continues: “Since I like to experiment and try new ways of doing things, it was the perfect medium – unpredictable, challenging and exciting. When I paint with watercolors, I use a lot of ways to apply them.” She mentions “brushes, rollers, bubble wrap and anything else that gives the appearance of texture. The results are wonderful.”

While Marly produces an occasional still-life and even purveys an especially popular depiction of a soldier’s well-worn boots, her abstracts are particularly striking. They tend to be vividly colorful with boldly rendered organic and geometric elements. She sells originals and prints. The latter often feature high-resolution photographs of watercolor pieces rendered on YUPO paper. Mounted on black wooden “floating frames” made by Marly, these works have a distinctive three-dimensional aspect. And she has some pieces printed on aluminum sheets by a company that employs a sophisticated infusion process.

Summing up her approach to art, Marly says: “I don’t always plan what I paint. I start with color, composition and shapes, then the rest seems to unfold little by little. When creating abstracts, I usually begin with a blank canvas or sheet of YUPO paper and then just let it happen. The tricky part is knowing when the painting is finished. It’s always a surprise even to me.”

Sounding another deeply personal note at conversation’s end, Marly shares that in 1982 she lost her only child: a son, Gary. As with her recent diminished-sight episode, she worked through it – though, for obvious reasons, it took longer.

After a few moments of silent reflection, Marly says: “My art keeps me positive. In fact, whenever I’m painting I get a rush that’s as good as any drug. It’s a natural high.”

Originals and prints by the artist are on display and for sale at Mountain Arts Gallery in Lake Arrowhead Village. Her website is www.marlysart.com.