Walton Ford: a Satiricial Emphasis on Hyracania

Walton Ford, in his workspace where he executes the most amazing work

Walton Ford’s art has a look and feel inspired by the early 18^th century – early 19^th century nature paintings. He unceasingly admired the beauty in the art within that era. Growing up, he was always exposed to that style of art in his home, which later assisted him in his conceptualization for his pieces. His naturalist illustrations are an inspirational resemblance to John James Audubon, who similarly achieves very well painted nature art as well.  Ford utilizes a mix of watercolor, gouache, graphite, ink and pencil to blend depictions of natural history through his art. Ford prefers to paint on a large scale though his format is paper. In an interview, July of 2008 by Ajay Kurian, Ford mentioned, “I do like to make the animals life-size because a lot of the early Naturalists did that. It also allows me to take a tiny piece of ephemera, or a piece of some obscure bit of knowledge and enlarge it, in a real physical way – like take the research and make it as large as life.”

Hyracania, 2007. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper. 60 x 119 1/2 inch.

  There are secrets in every painting. Ford paints with commentary and satire, leaving symbolic hints and evident clues that when dissected, it reveals his bold statement or joke. Ford is quite erudite in colonial literature and folktales also and often makes many references to it in his painting.  His animal portraits usually portray a sense of entrapment, curiosity, or trouble and these depictions are actually very complex and symbolic. Mysteriousness lurks in the characters of whatever subject he is painting.

The piece called Hyrcania, the tiger is holding on to a glass ball and he seems quite disturbed. After researching, I realize that it is based on a 13^th Century European bestiary. Hyrcania is a location, which became Persia and is now Iran. In that country, if one wants to steal a tiger cub from its mother, there is a process that involves those glass balls, similar to the one that the tiger in the painting is gripping on. One would go to the lair, grab the cub and flee on a horse. When the female tiger is chasing you, you throw these reflective glass balls over your shoulder. The mother tiger will see her reflection in the balls, and think it’s her cub. She’ll stop, and start to nurse or cuddle it. Then she’ll realize that she’s been fooled, but you’ll have gained enough distance to get away. Without knowing the truthful story of how tiger cubs are lured away by their mothers, one would not understand the piece of artwork.

The importance of the text on the painting, which also is the title to his piece aids in giving a clue to dissecting the story behind the artwork. He mentions in the 2008 interview, “I always felt like I wanted to use the text in a way that revealed something that was completely not in the image. I do the same with titles. It would open a door to research if possible, if you wanted to figure out what was going on in the picture. And also it would add another layer of meaning to the image that wasn’t visually there.” He truly wants the viewers to expand the text on their own rather than letting himself suffocates us with the meaning of the picture immediately. As it is a journey for him to create the piece, Ford wants it to be a journey for us to understand the piece .