By Anne Ruisi
Artist Dirk Walker didn’t discover his true calling until he was in his 30s, but since then he’s created several series of paintings that focus on scenes such as wildlife, landscapes, Birmingham landmarks and, notably in the holiday season, Santa Claus.
His Santa Claus artwork will be on display Dec. 1 at a Christmas trunk show at Brombergs in Mountain Brook from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Walker’s Santa Claus paintings, which he started creating about 25 years ago, have become popular with collectors – so popular, in fact, that one pediatrician collected 27 of them and decorated his office with the paintings during the holidays, Walker said.
“People have a warm, fresh and sometimes funny response to them,” Walker said.
He started painting the Santa series almost as a joke, he said. He always loved the Coca-Cola Santas and wanted to paint one.
People still ask him to do them, and while in previous years he made different versions to pick from, this year he’s only doing two original Santa paintings. Fans don’t have to worry about the originals being sold before they can buy one; Walker offers prints.
As a child in Vestavia Hills, Walker doodled, but his desire was to go into architecture. He was accepted at Auburn University but not into its renowned architecture school, so he went into industrial design.
Walker was working for Central Bank of the South in the 1980s when he started painting for stress relief. He took one of his pieces to the Loretta Goodwin Gallery in Birmingham to get framed, and Goodwin was impressed. She asked to see two or three more of his paintings.
“It took me about two years to feel confident to bring more in,” he said.
Eventually, he bought the gallery when Goodwin retired and owned it for about 20 years, until he decided to concentrate on painting and brought in Beverly McNeil.
The Beverly McNeil Gallery in Birmingham now carries his work, as do galleries in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. He has an online print store at dirkwalkerfineart.com.
