Artist’s road to recovery leads to Kentucky Crafted Market. See him plus 150 others.
A small canvas stands out in the midst of completed or in-progress paintings in Nick Walters’ Lexington studio. Lines and crescents of folded skin swirl around the unmistakable eye of a horse.
It’s an image Walters was drawn to painting a full horse image and a detail caught his eye: the horse’s rectangular pupil. That detail became something he wanted to figure out how to represent close up.
“I look at it as kinda like a puzzle,” Walters says of painting. “I see a reference image, and I know what I want, and I can draw it out. But then it’s getting from the line drawing to the painting. It’s a puzzle. I’ve got to figure it out strokes wise. I’ve got to figure out the mixing of the paints. A lot of times to get colors, it’s layering things.”
Walters, who will be one of the artists exhibiting at the Kentucky Crafted Market March 11 and 12 at the Kentucky Horse Park’s Alltech Arena, found painting while solving another problem: getting sober.
Being accepted into the Kentucky Crafted Market is a major milestone for Walters, who says the difficulty of his passion has been navigating the art world. It’s also a challenge preparing to serve customers looking to buy original works as well as those who may not be able to afford originals but would like a print or other object adorned with his work.
To Walters, being in Kentucky Crafted makes him feel, “accepted in the art community. You know, having not been doing this nearly as long as a lot of people, you can get impostor syndrome. But to be around people who’ve been doing it for years and making great stuff, it’s kind of a certification that I’m doing pretty good.”
This year’s event marks the 40th gathering and features more than 150 craft vendors ranging from fine art to ceramic and metal works and publishers. There will be live music and admission is free with donations encouraged to the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Walters formed Those Crosstown Rivals, a popular Lexington-based band that toured regionally and as far west as Colorado for four years. When the band folded, Walters filled his free time with drinking, not realizing he had a problem until it was too late.
His family took him to a Hazelden Betty Ford Treatment Center in Minnesota in 2016, and during his five-week stay, he found a set of watercolor paints and started painting in a fashion similar to drawings and cartoons he made as a child.
“I told my wife on the phone, ‘I’ve always wanted to paint. When I get back, I’m gonna buy some and try painting,’” Walters recalls. “So then, it was a few weeks after I got back, I bought some acrylics and just started playing around.
“Within a year, I was painting every day. I always thought you can paint well if you paint people. And it’s just the kind of art I always was amazed by in museums: people.”
He recalls growing up in Quantico, Va. and regularly visiting the Smithsonian museums. While his vibe leaned toward genres like graffiti art, “I was always drawn to the older artwork, like the Renaissance, all those things, portraits of people.”
Walters was amazed by the meticulous detail and wanted to figure out how the artists did it. As he started his own life as a painter, he began to work to understand those techniques and replicate them in his own creations, trading in acrylics for oils.
He quips that he traded in one addiction for another, and started seeing the work pay off selling paintings and prints, being shown in galleries, getting commissioned work, and earning distinctions such as honorable mention in a national competition of figurative art.
Rich Copley is a former arts writer and editor for the Herald-Leader who continues to enjoy Lexington’s arts and culture.
Kentucky Crafted Market
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. March 11, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. March 12
Where: Kentucky Horse Park Alltech Arena, 4089 Ironworks Pike
Admission: Free, $6 parking
Learn more: artscouncil.ky.gov
