Wallace Alfred Wyss.... an Interview with the artist...
WALLACE WYSS is a native of
Detroit but moved to California in 1969 to continue his work as an
automotive writer. Before that, he had been in advertising ,
writing ads for Chevrolet in the original "muscle car" era of the
'60s. In 2007 he made his first painting and is now transitioning
into the world of fine art. He gave us this exclusive
interview
Q. As a writer, what
magazines did you work for?
Wyss: I started on Motor
Trend, then went to CAR LIFE, and then when that magazine went
bust, rejoined Motor Trend in 1969 and stayed until 1972. Then
decades later I contributed to Car and Driver. Plus I wrote for
magazines in many countries, from Japan to Australia.
Q. What about your
books?
Wyss: I wrote the first one
Shelby's Wildlife: the Cobras and the Mustangs, in 1977.
That was a sort of hit-50,000 sold over 17 years in print, and then
wrote approximately nine more in the intervening years.
Q. During all this
time you didn't know you were an artist?
Wyss: I started in art in
college but immediately switched to writing when a summer intern
program was opened offering a job in advertising copywriting. After
graduation I first wrote Oldsmobile ads then switched to the agency
with the Chevrolet account.
Q. What were your
books
on?
Wyss: One on the rotary
engine, two on Ferrari, one on Porsche, one on drag racing, three
on Corvette and three on Shelby. The last one of those is
SHELBY The Man The Car The Legend.
Q. So you made your
first painting when?
Wyss: I did it purely as a promotional
effort. Back in 2007. I was going to the Beverly Hills car show on
Rodeo Drive with the idea of promoting my book on Shelby which had
just come out. I brought along an oil painting I had made of
Carroll Shelby when he was an up-and-coming race driver and a small
picture of the painting. I sold the book to a publisher I met there
and when I showed him the picture of the painting, he asked
"Where's the painting?" and I said "In my car, six blocks away." He
said "Go get it, you sold that too." On the long walk back, I
thought "If they want my art, I'll be an artist."
Q. So Shelby cars featured in your first
paintings?
Wyss: Yes, I knew I was going
to be doing a few book signings at bookstores, so wanted to have
something to put on the book singing table. So, for the first year
or so, I made paintings of a chrome Kirkham 427(a Cobra
replica--Ed.) , a Gulf GT40 that won LeMans, an '06 Ford GT, small
block Cobras and so forth. After that year, I decided to do some
Ferraris and Porsches and other cars that have interested me
through the years. Ironically some of my favorite cars I still
haven't painted because I don't have good reference photos. Maybe I
have a photo but it wasn't shot at the right time of day for the
light to "define" the voluptuous shape. So now I am going to car
events late in the day to get that "golden light."
Q. You make it a practice to work from
pictures?
Wyss: Yes. I admire the skills of those artists
who can start with a raw sheet of paper but in the past, I
have tried to draw a car from scratch and you
need so much equipment like elipse guides to do the wheels and such
that I just don't have the patience. I just walk out in my office
and peruse my collection of 10,000 photos to see if I have anything
I can base the painting on.
Q. Would we recognize
the photograph from seeing the painting?
Wyss: Sometimes-it depends on how realistic I
want to get. For instance in my painting of Dan Gurney in the Targa
Florio in a Cobra 289, I was using a Ford PR photograph that was
only made available in black and white. I taped the picture on the
corner of my paper and told myself 'If I can't
mix the color of the car right, I won't do it' but when the color
came out correct on the car, I decided to go ahead and make the
whole painting.
Q. Do you do a lot of research on your period
paintings?
Wyss: A lot of car art collectors are bugs on
accuracy. So I have to make some effort to make sure the color of
the car is right if it's a race car. For instance I painted a '63
Cobra with a hardtop at LeMans but made the car red. Fortunately I
hadn't ordered any reproductions before I checked a few websites
and found out the colors of the two Cobras at LeMans that year were
light green and white.
So I have to repaint the car
to get the color right before I make any reproductions.
Q. Would you be pleased with the title
"super-realist?"
Wyss: I think another term for that style now in
vogue is "hyper-realism." That adjective would only
apply to some of my work, for instance my Gulf
GT40 at Monterey. It's hard to tell the background in that painting
from a photograph. But other times , when there
is a problem with the background, say a 1995 truck in back of a '59
Ferrari Testa Rossa, I will either blank out the background in
white or render it in dark shadows so as not to distract from the
car.
Yet not
every painting has this abstracted background. I am still searching
for a style I can call my own.
Q. Do you go back and change things in your
work?
Wyss: Rarely. Only say one out of 20 paintings I
print on canvas as a "giclee"( pronounced GHEE CLAY) Sometimes as I
see that around my house, I become dissatisfied with it , maybe the
colors, and paint right over portions of it, creating what in the
art world is called an "embellished" giclee. It no longer can carry
the number it was assigned in a limited edition
because, by virtue of being modified, it has become a one-off.
That's what I did with my '06 Ford GT painting that I sold at the
Mecum auction at Monterey. There's only one existent now with that
color scheme where the other giclees of my original all look
alike.
Q. When you paint a race car that is in modern vintage
racing, do you make the whole painting "period?"
Wyss: No, only a few depict racing in the
original era of the car since I wasn't around racetracks in the
Fifties and didn't shoot photos at the races I went to in the
Sixties. Most are from vintage racing. The problem with vintage
racing is that, in the open cars, the owner might have spent
hundreds of thousands making his car authentic, but as soon as he
puts on that modern full face helmet he destroys the "period" look
of my photo. I haven't decided whether to paint old style helmets
on the drivers or not. If I do, then
I can't label the event I saw it at
because if you were
there you know they weren't using
vintage helmets.
Q. What's your favorite media?
Wyss: I started
doing watercolors but grew frustrated with the transparency so I
switched to acrylics which can be both transparent and opaque
depending on how much water you thin them out with. Some of my
works are collages, in that I will cut out parts of other paintings
I've already done and glue them into a new painting so those would
have to be "mixed media." I don't sell the originals, though, only
the prints, so it's difficult to tell from the print if the
original was all one sheet or if it's a collage.
Q. Who are your favorite automotive
artists?
Wyss: Just about everyone in a very exclusive
group called the "Automotive Fine Arts Society." I think Ken
Dallison is the best in watercolors, then I like Jay Koka for his
willingness to change styles, and Harold Cleworth for his paintings
that look good from a way off, and Nicola Wood for her subtleties
in her Cadillac paintings. I would say the AFAS show at Pebble
Beach is my favorite day of the year. When you see me there, you'll
see that I'm happy as a pig in mud.
Q. When you shoot pictures for reference, what
camera and lens would you recommend?
Wyss: I am not so particular about the
camera as I am the choice of lens. Some people have the idea that a
wide angle lens makes the car look more dramatic and I agree up to
a point-a 35 mm makes a more dramatic picture than a 50mm. But now
I use a 28mm which is as "wide angle" as I want to go because a
24mm would start to distort the car too much. You have to remember,
if it's too distorted people who have never seen that kind of car
before won't be able to get a good idea on what it looks like if
it's too exaggerated.
I also use a 36-86 zoom for
telephoto shots to"isolate" the car in a crowd and come in just on
the car.
The time of the day is the most critical in terms
of art. I used to favor mornings but now, because
of fog, I prefer late afternoon particularly if it is a sunny
day. The problem is, most events end too early and end
at say 4:30 pm when the light is just starting to get good at 6:30
pm!
Q. Do you shoot digital?
Wyss: I tried to shoot digital and had trouble
with batteries and then remembered, in my Nikon F3,
the shutter is still manual in my Nikon so, if push comes to
shove, I can still trip the shutter without a battery. I usually
shoot low cost color print film but occasionally shoot color slides
because it's easier to choose which ones to make into paintings.But
there's a cost penalty--each roll costs me 10 times more for slide
film than print film and 3 times more to process it than print
film, so it's a tough decision. I also carry a $1.98 backup camera
I bought at a thrift shop-I use that to rib the guys loaded down
with expensive cameras , saying "It's not the camera-it's the
eye."
Q. Where do you see car art
going?
Wyss: Except for a handful of artists like Geo
Hamm, in the world of fine art, any painting depicting a car was
shunted off to a back tributary.
I believe the sale of a
single painting may change all that. When Jack
Vettriano's painting "Bluebird at Bonneville"-depicting Sir Malcolm
Campbell's Bonneville speed record car (see http://www.squidoo.com/jack-vettriano), sold
for almost a million dollars recently, I think those in the fine
arts community had to readjust their prejudice against automotive
art, and realize that depictions of cars are not just for
greasy-fingered car people-that there are many connoisseurs of the
fine arts who also collect automobiles like Ralph Lauren. I predict
there will be more almost million dollar sales of automotive art in
the next decade.
Q. What car will you paint next?
Wyss: My big event of the year are
those that occur during what we call "Monterey Car week." I shot
about ten rolls this year but haven't really culled them yet to see
what strikes my fancy. I am torn between continuing to paint old
classics of the Fifties and Sixties -cars from my era,
essentially-or to be the first one to do brand new cars just
hitting the market like the Ferrari 458 Italia which I haven't seen
yet in person. I just completed a painting of the new Ferrari
California Spyder. I really don't make a decision on which car I
will make a painting of until I have five to ten 8" x 12" color
photos in front of me and one "grabs" me and says "Paint
me."
Q. What's your advice
for those who want to take photos of cars that could someday be
thought of as "art?"
Wyss: Go to each car event with your camera ready
and be on the lookout for photo ops-such as when I saw two little
girls being put into the cockpit of a classic car at a concours. I
waited around for a minute to photograph them in the car because I
knew it would be a charming shot. But I would say that only 1% of
all the photos I've taken have the right mix in terms of color,
composition and subject to be considered for a painting. The rest
are just record shots of what I saw but not interesting enough to
be a painting. Or a handful are so good as a photograph, why bother
to make a painting?
Q. Where can one
order your art?
Wyss: I have a dealer, Alex Balestrieri, near
Chicago. He has some of the 12" x 18" reproductions of
my oils pictured on his website www.Albaco.net.
Q. What prices are you work selling for?
Wyss: My large giclees, 22" x 30" ,
sell for $350 USD. The limited editions on watercolour paper, sized
12" x 18" are being marketed for just $45 USD. Shipping is
extra. My sales director, Alex@albaco.net , can provide all the
details.
To contact Wallace : use photojournalistpro@hotmail.com
