Montauk Painter Kenneth Walsh's Legacy Is Strong Decades After His Death

This week, Dan’s brings back the work of late Montauk painter Kenneth Walsh to our cover with “Jonathan,” a brilliant composition illuminated by this conversation with his son, local musician Christopher Walsh, who also shares thoughts from his older brother, the subject of this eponymous painting. Below, Christopher Walsh discusses his father’s painting career, how “Jonathan” came to be, and his efforts keeping Kenneth Walsh’s artistic legacy alive nearly 50 years after his death in 1980.

A Conversation About Kenneth Walsh

This is our second time featuring your father’s work on the cover. Tell me about this piece? Does it represent someone?

Like “A Horn Blows at Midnight,” which was featured on the cover of the December 20, 2024, issue of Dan’s Papers, “Jonathan” is based on a photograph. Where “A Horn Blows at Midnight” depicted me at age 8, “Jonathan” is a painting of my brother at around the same age. Our father used to take us fishing, sometimes on one of the Viking boats, sometimes from a dock on East Lake Drive and, as depicted in this painting, on a small beach between the jetty and Gosman’s restaurant.

Kenneth painted in a variety of styles, including these very modern (at the time) compositions. Can you talk about that, and what you know about his work in this style?

Early on, my father was inspired by painters like Van Gogh. From the 1950s until 1971, he painted mainly watercolor portraits and seascapes in a style best called “soft realism” (and also made collages, mobiles and sculptures out of driftwood and such that he found while beach combing). During a few years’ treatment for bipolar disorder, he did not paint at all, but in 1974 he began painting in a new expressionist style that was influenced by the work of Picasso, another painter who he greatly admired.

Your father died quite a long time ago. How did you learn so much about him and his work? What was the research process like?

Fortunately, I was there when he painted all of his modern, abstract work in the 1970s, so my family and I have plenty of firsthand knowledge. When I started to gather, restore, and document his work, I sought recollections from extended family, those who were around before me. I learned so much more when I went to Florida to visit an artist who’d worked for him at his studio in Manhattan. I also searched The East Hampton Star on microfilm, finding many items on exhibitions in which his work was featured, and a mention of an exhibition of his work in The New York Times. Jonathan and I combed our memories and wrote a few essays that are on the website dedicated to our father’s work, KennethBWalshArt.com.

Tell me about what you are doing to promote his work and legacy?

His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in Montauk, Amagansett and East Hampton, it has been featured in group exhibitions on the South Fork, and reproductions of his work, as well as select original pieces, are offered via the website. Along with Dan’s, he has been written about in Whalebone magazine, the Express News Group’s newspapers, and in the Star.

Do you have a favorite piece or style of your father’s?

Because Dan’s is featuring “Jonathan,” I thought to ask my brother. His favorite is “American Trinity,” which he considers to be our father’s best “psychological infographic.” I think it’s ahead of its time, predicting, in the mid-1970s, figures who have risen to enormous influence today. See it and you’ll get it, says Jonathan.

My own favorite, not surprisingly, is “A Horn Blows at Midnight.” I did not inherit the visual art gene. Instead, music has always been my passion. “A Horn Blows at Midnight” hangs above the piano in my home and between guitars hanging on the walls. Inspired by that painting and the music of Chet Baker, now I want to learn the trumpet, too. The painting reminds me of childhood and the Montauk School, where I was in the band — but playing the trombone, not the trumpet! I think there were already several trumpeters and not enough trombones.

I also love his watercolors, as everyone seems to. One can see in them the gentler, more tranquil Montauk of more than 60 years ago, undiscovered relative to the present. For many years, two of them hung in the halls of the Montauk School, which Jonathan also attended. Both are in my home now, thanks to the former principal donating them back to me.

Any new projects in the works?

I am about to offer a Christmas card depicting “A Horn Blows at Midnight,” as I did a few years ago. Jonathan has recently started producing 45-page “graphic metaphysics,” or spiritual graphic novels, having been inspired by our father’s “psychological infographic” paintings. The first one, now finished and ready for publication, is titled “Tree of Life” and subtitled “Re: Unification of Science and Religion.”

Another thing I’d love to do is animate his paintings. The figures in the later abstract works are often playful and in motion. For example, the figures depicted in “The Dancers” would make a nice animated feature.

Where can people see more of Kenneth Walsh’s art?

You can see prints of his most famous work, “Montauk,” on the walls of residences all over the New York-Long Island area and beyond, as many people have purchased fine art and poster reproductions of it (the original was sold to a Manhattan collector in 2017). The “Montauk” map he made in the early 1960s — this was very much aimed at tourists — can be seen in the 2009 documentary Cropsey. News and imagery is on his Facebook page, facebook.com/KenWalshArt. Otherwise, visit KennethBWalshArt.com and stay tuned for the next gallery show.