WALTER KOCH
Walter Koch was born and raised in Lourenço Marques, Mozambique with his early adult life being in Johannesburg, South Africa but now resides in Windsor UK. Art and colour have always given Walter a great deal of pleasure and one of his earliest memories is colouring in the block squares in a ledger at his father’s office at the age of six.
His private education with a tutor gave him a foundation of free thinking which is reflected in the abstract expression that can be seen in all his work. Walter’s works have a vibrant, lively and often playful quality and are always very colourful. He is never afraid to use bold shapes, lines and hues and is equally happy working on small intricate watercolours, larger than life acrylic works and digital images on his iMac. He constantly quotes from his education, his background and his experience. The Oxford Dictionary describes a “ QUOTATION ” as: “ A group of words taken from a text or speech and repeated by someone other than the original author or speaker. A short musical passage or visual image taken from one piece of music or work of art and used in another. ”
Walter does not use text or words but he “collects visual Quotes”. His African roots can be seen in the way he represents urban graffiti and tagging. So in essence his quotes are from the indigenous African artists from hundreds of years ago, painting on the walls of their caves, pop artist from the last decades and modern day urban graffiti artists painting on walls in London combined with some of his own “quotes” from previous works.
As he searches through his collection of “quotes”, one will spark an idea for a new work. He repeats the process and the work becomes a dialogue between the stored images, the fresh images from his imagination and work on the canvas or boards and ultimately the dialogue continues with those viewing his images in galleries, at art fairs, in the homes of those who have bought his work and online.
Walter believes that every idea can be expressed in several languages and that there isn’t a right one or a wrong one. Sometimes he chooses from his abstract language and at other times he chooses something more figurative, and it is this choice of language that he finds very exciting. He believes that if people can derive joy from viewing his art then he has achieved his goal.
