Frank Walter: Moon Voyage

Francis Archibald Wentworth Walter, known as Frank Walter, was born on Horsford Hill, Antigua, on September 11, 1926. Feeling a deep connection to his native land, he studied agriculture and the sugar industry—the basis of Antigua’s economy—and at the age of twenty-two became the first person of color to work as a manager within the Antiguan Sugar Syndicate. He spent much of the 1950s traveling and learning advanced agricultural and industrial techniques in England, Scotland, and West Germany. During this time, he experienced the depths of racism and bias against people of color.

While in Europe, Walter pursued a variety of creative and artistic outlets, including drawing and painting as well as writing prose, philosophical texts, and poetry. The artist returned to the Caribbean in 1961, where, in addition to painting, drawing, and writing, he began making sculptures, photographs, and sound recordings. He spent most of his remaining lifetime in relative isolation, reflecting, writing, and making art inspired by his thoughts, knowledge, journeys, and surroundings.

Moon Voyage takes its title from a painting in Walter’s Milky Way Galaxy series, a body of work that expresses the artist’s interest in outer space, extraterrestrial life, and the mysteries of the universe. A group of works from this series—which have rarely before been exhibited together—forms one of several focal points of this show.

Painted toward the end of Walter’s life, when he lived without electricity at his home on Bailey Hill, the works reflect the artist’s proximity to and appreciation for the night sky, as he spent most evenings in darkness. Here he employs a palette of golden yellow, gray, black, white, and red to fantastically depict zooming spaceships, celestial light beams, and moon craters—evocative motifs that emerged out of his practice of gazing at the stars.

Another selection of works in the exhibition further highlights Walter’s keen sense of observation and his vivid imagination, through figurative and representational paintings of subjects both real and envisioned. Ranging from images of heraldic devices to tranquil nature scenes or colorful architectural facades, these compositions speak to the breadth of Walter’s practice and the scope of his vision.

Throughout his life, Walter shifted from the landscape genre to abstraction and back again, returning to certain vistas or motifs as a way of working through various ideas and compositional strategies. His paintings range from highly individualistic, vividly colored landscapes that evoke the Romantic spirit of William Blake and Caspar David Friedrich to systematic, abstract compositions reminiscent of the paintings of Hilma af Klint, all rendered in the artist’s own absorbing palette and distinctive visual style.

Struggling with mental health issues throughout his life, Walter often experienced hallucinations and other neurological phenomena. To that end, the language of abstraction provided him a means of expressing personal experiences and feelings. He often mixed abstract and figurative forms in his compositions, drawing from wide-ranging sources including architecture, games, science, and astronomy.

At a young age, Walter learned the specifics of his ancestry: that he was a descendant of enslaved persons and plantation owners. With this knowledge came the understanding that his existence was inextricably entwined with histories of slavery and sexual violence. Coupled with the racism and brutality he became victim to as an adult, Walter turned to art as the vehicle by which he tried to reconcile his expectations around life as the ancestor of a white man with the reality of his experiences.

A full wall of the gallery space is devoted to an expansive installation of Walter’s signature Polaroid paintings—minute traditional landscapes made on the packaging of Polaroid film cartridges. These intimately scaled, vibrantly colored, and powerfully reductive compositions showcase Walter in his essence, serving as miniature windows into the artist’s extraordinary world.

Walter painted landscapes and seascapes throughout his life, often depicting his native Antigua, which he represented in rich tropical colors, and Europe, where he traveled during the 1950s. Using the materials available to him, he painted his smaller scale landscapes on Polaroid film cartridges, cardstock, and the backs of photographs, giving these works a unique object quality.

For Walter, making art was not just a personal outlet but a method of healing and a way to contribute to the collective well-being. “He knew well the fragility of a human mind, as he was high functioning, finely tuned, and therefore intensely fragile,” writes Barbara Paca. After studying his works and writings in depth, the neurosurgeon Caitlin Hoffman characterized Walter’s talent as a unique form of creative brilliance distinct from madness.

The challenges Walter faced eventually led him to retreat inward. This solitude became both a refuge and a source of inspiration for his art. His landscape paintings reflect the quietude and introspection of his existence, capturing the beauty and vastness of his surroundings with a dreamlike quality. These works, often infused with an almost spiritual reverence for nature, stand as a testament to Walter’s ability to transform personal hardship into poetic visual expressions of place and self.