FR - Walter Slock, whom we met during his exhibition at the Temple d’Arpaillargues, has been drawing since he was a small child. A self-confessed self-taught artist, the Belgian painter, who has been based in Blauzac since the early 2000s, has carefully developed a highly personal style, drawing inspiration from the comic books he loves so much, creating vibrant works that oscillate between acrylic painting and linocut.
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‘Linocut is a relatively recent form of printmaking compared to other techniques such as woodcut, copperplate engraving or lithography. This medium was invented in England around 1860 and subsequently developed quite rapidly in the Netherlands and Germany. But it was notably the German artist Erich Henckel (1883–1970) who was the first artist to create a black-and-white linocut in 1903. In 1915, the Dutch artist Reijer Stolk (1896–1945) created the first multicoloured linocut’ (Walter Slock).
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In his numerous exhibitions across Belgium and France, Walter Slock presents a vibrant collection of works, to which he has devoted himself entirely since the onset of COVID. Undoubtedly influenced in the conception of his subjects by his career as an architect specialising in Historic Monuments and urban planning (he played an active role in the renovation of his hometown), Walter Slock creates settings that are often dreamlike, enhanced by colour.
Whilst his approach to composing the settings in his paintings is reminiscent of his training in the studios of the Belgian animation film director and comic book author Raoul Servais (1928–2023), the artist from Ghent and Blauzac (though of Dutch and Polish origin) nevertheless adds original touches, such as these fantastical animals drawn from the medieval or mythological bestiary.
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Good to know: During his studies, Walter Slock worked with the excavation team from the Faculty of Archaeology at Ghent University in Iraq, and studied at the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
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As soon as you enter his exhibitions, your gaze is drawn to depictions of the fables he tells visitors, which are as naive as they are vivid. Shimmering fish and snakes, tropical birds, trees with dense foliage, sky and river are often omnipresent and undeniably reminiscent of African batiks… The ‘pictures within a frame’—these paintings that stand out against the backdrop of a window or door frame used as an unconventional support—are among the painter’s most original presentations.
Among the many works we discovered at the Arpaillargues exhibition in late May, which at times elegantly blend linocut and painting, we must not forget to mention these superb floral compositions, where tulips, lilies and other flowers almost break free from the canvases, coming to life as they absorb the light in the most beautiful of ways… Some small frames, meanwhile, with their graphic black-and-white style, play on contrasts, whilst others, pigmented with intense, flashy colours, evoke tomatoes, peppers and carrots—as well as cherries, bananas and so on—with subtle, mouth-watering touches. And then, how could we forget this little nod to life in the Gard region: the bull and the wild boar, as dark as can be.
In a nutshell, Walter Slock’s painting is incredibly vibrant, and we love it!
Many thanks to Walter Slock for the guided tour of his exhibition.
Photos@serra.gilbert.