Andromeda

Clayton E. Walker

Clayton Walker's father was a professional sign painter in Kentucky and the artist, as a child, often used his father's brushes and house paint to create his own works on the side of a barn. This color woodcut pays an homage to those experiences, a riot of basic colors applied vertically to the surface. Though the composition appears to be gestural, each color requires the cutting and printing of a separate block.

'Andromeda' is a spiral galaxy of some one trillion stars, about 2-1/2 million light years from Earth, and appears to Earth's residents near the constellation of 'Andromeda', which is named after the daughter of the Aethiopian king Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia in Greek mythology.

While studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1955 Walker met and began a long friendship with Picasso. He returned to the US to Texas, taking a job as art director at the San Antonio Institute of Art until 1963. This woodcut was done during that period.