Brushing up on the cultural center's newest art exhibit

Michael Walden of Westport began his career in art when he was a child making art and objects out of anything he could find. His artwork has since been on display in galleries in New York City, and now it adorns the walls of the Dartmouth Cultural Center for the second time.

He explained that the New York galleries are bigger and more museum-like, with big white walls and open spaces, while showing at the cultural center gives him the opportunity to think and picture how his artwork could fit in people’s homes.

“It’s a lot of work to pull this stuff together, and the greatest thing about it is to be able to share with people,” he said.

Walden has been working on his series of work for a few years, basing his pieces on the Chinese proverb of “See no evil, hear no evil speak no evil.”

Painting oil paintings and making prints, Walden described his artwork as “teetering on the edge of being one thing or the other,” which often features partially obscured figures.

“It’s always sort of a battle between optimism or pessimism or something opposite, and it sort of continues,” he said.

Walden has been developing his idea over the past four or five years, and has begun to see his work as more important as the political landscape changes.

“It’s sort of an exploration of the ideas of hiding oneself or figuring out a way to move beyond hiding or coming out of hiding, I think, in a time where we are sort of fighting with the ideas of not having free speech,” he said.

Walden paints primarily with oil paints and creates prints in a lithographic process with mono prints, which involves drawing a design on a flat stone and affixing it through a chemical reaction.

“Printmaking is a bit more fun for me, and there’s more surprise because I’m not an expert at it, so I don’t really know completely what’s going to happen when I peel away the paper,” he said.

Walden was an elementary school art teacher for 21 years before returning to school for his second master’s degree and questioning if he could still teach while pursuing his own art career.

“I started to have a little fight inside me about [whether] I can continue to be this great art teacher, or I can try and be a great artist,” he said, recognizing that he wouldn’t be able to do both.

He decided that he needed to take a break from teaching to see if he could pursue what he always told his students: “make the world a better place with art.”

“Art kind of changes the conversation, so it’s what I’m trying to do,” he said.

Walden’s artwork will be on display at the Dartmouth Cultural Center, located at 404 Elm Street, through Saturday, Nov. 15. The gallery is open Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.