Walter Us offers another look at landscapes

If poetry could be expressed with paint, Walter Us would be a happy man. If drama could be distilled on a flat surface, Mr. Us would make it so. Every time the Sag Harbor painter picks up his brush, Mr. Us strives to mesh poetry and drama to imply more than paint can render.

Mr. Us—who hails originally from Austria and sometimes goes by his Austrian first name, Valta—renders his landscapes with what he calls an “American style of painting,” as demonstrated by the Hudson River School painters. Like the 19th century painters, Mr. Us makes realistic landscape paintings that are more concerned with capturing the emotional and spiritual essence of the vista than with an exact replication.

This, combined with Mr. Us’s studies of Western European art history and a restless yen for experimentation with painterly techniques, funnels into a single focus. Mr. Us strives to make contemporary paintings that capture the spirit of the American landscapes of today. Each is imbued with an implied narrative, psychological tension and spiritual resonance, he said.

“I strive to make it real and to have conviction in the paintings I’m producing,” Mr. Us said. “I

want to re-create something that I really believe in.”

Some of Mr. Us’s paintings are part of the group exhibition, “Three Points of View,” on view through February 26 at the North Main Street Gallery in Southampton. Mr. Us is represented by nine paintings depicting landscapes of the East End, Vermont and Montana. The exhibition also includes portraits by Toinette Gay and abstract works by Brian O’Leary. All three artists live in Sag Harbor.

When Mr. Us makes a painting, he begins drawing a quick sketch or putting down part of a painting on location. The types of views that command his attention have some type of dramatic flair, he said. An East Hampton farm field, for example, had him setting up his easel because it seemed to be a stage set. Other times, it’s the way the clouds link with the land or how a line of trees draws his eye.

After his plein air beginnings, the real transformation happens in his studio. To coax emotional content into the scene, Mr. Us shuns a literal visual translation and lets his classical painting education take over.

Color is important. So is the way the paint plays upon the surface of the canvas and in the underpainting. Ultimately, Mr. Us said, he strives to instill a psychological narrative so the paintings will linger in the mind of the viewer long after they have been seen.

To get the effect he’s looking for, Mr. Us favors glazing opaque colors instead of simply applying oil paint on a brush. In most instances, he prefers a classical mix that includes linseed oil, Damar varnish and turpentine along with different pigments, he said. Other times, he substitutes walnut oil or a stand oil or wax to vary the consistency.

“I’m curious about all parts of painting,” he said, “all the techniques and all possibilities, so I have a choice of many varieties of how I want to make a painting.”

Using glazes allows him to achieve a soft tonality in his art. Through the process, replicating the actual vista is folded into a landscape of Mr. Us’s own making. While his art is inspired by the colorists, the Hudson River School painters and the impressionists, in the end the painting style is all his own.

“People can think some of my paintings are impressionism,” he said. “They’re not exactly; the difference that you see is me.”

Mr. Us has exhibited at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor and Hampton Road Gallery in Southampton and is a member of the East Hampton Artists Alliance. He has shown in galleries in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Montana and other galleries in the U.S.

His work has also been shown at the DeCordova Museum, the Berkshire Museum of Art and the Fuller Museum of Art, all in Massachusetts. Mr. Us has been awarded two Pollock Krasner Foundation grants, two residencies at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and other grants and fellowships.

“Three Points of View” is on view through February 26 at the North Main Street Gallery, 4 North Main Street, Southampton.