Searching For His Father's Paintings

When Christopher Walsh was a young boy growing up in Montauk, he asked Santa Claus for a trumpet.

It was Christmas at the Montauk Fire Department in 1974 and Santa rolled into town on a fire truck. Santa Claus was being portrayed by the janitor who worked at the Montauk School where Mr. Walsh was a student. Although the young boy could see through the guise, it didn’t stop him from sitting on Santa’s lap and asking for a trumpet—a wish that was later granted by his parents, Kenneth and Gail Walsh.

A thrilled 8-year-old Christopher posed excitedly in photos with the musical instrument. And it was one of those photos that inspired his father, a commercial art studio owner and painter at the time, to re-create it into an abstract, modern painting. Decades after his father’s death, the painting ignited a desire within the younger Mr. Walsh to get closer to his dad.

As a result, Mr. Walsh, 45, and now living in Brooklyn, is searching for his father’s work—paintings he created for local residents in Montauk at the time before he died from bone cancer in 1980 at the age of 58. The goal is to gather, restore and document the works in an attempt to get some recognition for his father’s work posthumously, through either an exhibit, or marketing them as images for greeting cards.

“I just know that the paintings had been lying around for so long,” Mr. Walsh said in a recent interview. “I always really liked the one of myself playing the trumpet. It’s just over time I started to think about this is like an asset and maybe we should try to do something with it.”

So far, Mr. Walsh has pinpointed the whereabouts of 30 of his father’s paintings. He received feedback after writing a letter to the East Hampton Star earlier this year and learned that there were two of his father’s paintings at the Montauk School and one at Gosman’s Dock.

John Gosman, one of the painter’s close friends, said the artist gifted him an abstract painting of a woman. He described the elder Mr. Walsh as having an “artist’s temperament,” often subject to highs and lows. He also said Mr. Walsh used to have a studio at Gosman’s Dock. Aside from that, he founded a successful commercial art business in Manhattan called Bonart Studio.

“He was a very passionate person,” Mr. Gosman said. “He loved life, I guess you could say.”

The artist’s paintings varied from watercolors to a more abstract, Picasso-like style. Mr. Walsh said his father’s most prolific period was in the mid-1970s.

The family moved out to Montauk from New York City shortly after the elder Mr. Walsh was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He closed the Bonart and moved to the East End sometime in the 1970s, Mr. Walsh said.

According to Mr. Walsh, his father painted watercolors depicting the natural environment of the East End in the 1960s. His style changed to a more modern style in the mid-1970s, Mr. Walsh added.

One of his father’s paintings, “Montauk,” is 6 feet long and depicts various businesses in Montauk. Mr. Walsh believes another abstract painting is based on a 1960’s watercolor of a lobsterman.

Mr. Walsh said it’s likely his father chose to move to the East End because of the natural scenery, the light and the people.

“I think it had a lot to do with what a lot of other artists were on the East End for,” he said. “I myself marvel at the sunsets out there and how the skies turn so many different beautiful shades of red and blue.”

In a sense, Mr. Walsh’s search for his father’s paintings has reconnected him with Montauk. He described his childhood on the East End as “idyllic.” His father’s painting of him with the trumpet sparked feelings of home, he said.

“I really closely identify that with me and with my childhood, and it reminds me of a simpler time, an innocent time, when all was right in the world.”

To contact Mr. Walsh, email him at chrisink@live.com.