Sean Wallis is a painter based in Salt Lake City, Utah. As an impressionist, Wallis pays close attention to the relationship of light and color, capturing fleeting moments with the texture of oil paint, loose brushwork and colorful palette. His work with light, hue, and atmosphere manifest through a skillful combination of colors that vibrates and excites the eye, resulting in an uncanny illusion of depth and movement.
Water has captured the imagination since the beginning of time. Living in a high desert, people are drawn to water. There is a serenity to it that can really speak to your soul, as well as an excitement that can energize you, just ask anyone who has yelled “cannon ball!” Water becomes a meeting place. Often landscapes are just what we cross to get to water. These areas are teaming with life and often help to cultivate the beauty I want to portray in my most romantic vision of the west.
For me it is about letting your hand be as free as the water you are trying to imitate. Texture provides a way to say a lot with a few brush strokes. For me that is freeing. In an academic sense, however, you have to nail the value. If your values are correct, you can be wild and free with the flowing of the brush strokes, and it will still retain that sense of realism and cohesion.
Turbulence is more technically demanding for me. A reflective, still water is about brushstrokes and moving the paint to create a sense of calm and reflection. To paint a rushing river, you have so much subtlety in every inch, that it takes more time and effort to recreate.
For me water is life. It’s engrained in each of us, this desire, beyond thirst, to be near it. Lay by a stream and feel your entire nervous system calm. Lay by a stream and feel your entire nervous system calm –that is why people are drawn to paintings of water – they want to bring that feeling indoors. I remember hiking through the Tetons and being surprised by a glacial lake; the beauty and serenity I felt when I saw it made me abandon my hike, and I fell asleep with my feet in the water. Luckily some other hikers woke me in time to return to camp before dark.
I work from a combination of references. I love painting plein air above all, a practice I developed with my father, impressionist painter Kent Wallis over five years of Sundays, but some paintings are too big to do outside, so I will utilize a photograph. I also will paint from my mind at times. I have photos taken when water was low, but added water where I know it would be on wet years.
The feeling I try to evoke is that calm serenity, almost a nostalgia. Think of your favorite memories, I bet more than a few are near water. Even when I paint rushing rivers, I want my viewers to almost hear the water as they see my work.