Dog Ears Bookstore & Café, located at 688 Abbott Road in South Buffalo, will feature the artwork of Walter S. Mayo beginning Jan. 4. The exhibit will run through February.
“My life journey has taken many different turns in the arts,” said Mayo. “While my professional training is in the performance and teaching of music, visual art has been a life-long interest and passion. My first influence was my Aunt Pearl, our family’s first artist. It was not only her passion for art and life which I remember, but also her jolly laugh and the flamboyant color of her life. Perhaps it was looking at her paintings or just listening to her describe how she painted plates and bowls that caught my imagination. My mother was always proud of any artwork that she obtained from my aunt.
“As a child I used to draw cartoon figures and make arts and crafts; I took my first instruction in art from a correspondence course in figure drawing. In school I gravitated to crafts and drawing with charcoal. As I have gotten older, painting with pastels has become my preferred artistic medium because it is direct, immediate and spontaneous. Recently, I have experimented with combining pen and ink, charcoal, acrylic, and/or watercolor with pastel.
“My artistic themes are varied, although lately I have been experimenting with combining abstraction and realism — anything that captures my attention,” Mayo continued. “While I emphasize color and realism as a means of communication, it is the artistic vision which makes the painting interesting to me. By vision I mean the presentation of a unique physical setting or subject, the contrast of form and texture, the use of color and form, and/or a unique involvement of the eye, mind and body with the subject — in short, whatever the artist sees that others do not. In other words, this vision is the result of deep reflection or introspection of life, which I hope others see in my art.”
To view samples of Mayo’s work, please visit www.wsmayoart.com. And for more information about the nonprofit bookstore, please call 823-2665, visit the bookstore at 688 Abbott Road or follow Dog Ears on Facebook for frequent updates.
