In his otherwise pristine, neat house and studio, renowned Sedona painter Curt Walters’ spare bedroom is full of cardboard boxes.

“These are all books,” he said. “I know it looks like a lot. It feels like a lot — they’re really heavy — but they’re almost all spoken for. So they’re all going to go away in the next six months.”

Walters has been working on a retrospective book on his life and work for over a decade.

The book, “Resilience: The Life History and Grand Canyon Art of Curt Walters,” splits his artwork into themes, usually based on how he felt when painting a piece.

The book will be released on Tuesday, Feb. 3, but people have already begun to pre-order copies.

“Technique is born from a need to express, and so I don’t have rules about technique,” Walters said “I do whatever.”

His themes are largely places he’s been to paint, including the Grand Canyon, the Sedona area and travelling overseas.

“I went to Bali, and that had a huge influence on my painting, and came back and did all kinds of crazy stuff after that,” Walters said.
“It actually changed my life.”

Walters travelled to paint in Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland and from coast to coast in the United States.

“I’ve worked really hard to capture the moods and make each story of each painting its unique story, and I think that when you flip through here, you understand that they’re all different,” Walters said. “I’m not repetitive at all, which is hard to do.”

The original author, Susan Campbell, Ph.D., who he met after his first retrospective presentation in Indianapolis, retired in 2020 and had to stop working on the book.

Walters then gave the manuscript to his grandson, dDamien Foreman, an actor, published author and Sedona Red Rock High School alumnus.

“Readers of this book might assume that Grand Canyon is Curt’s only subject,” Foreman wrote in the introduction. “That is not the case. Of the approximately 2,610 artworks in his catalogue raisonné at the time of this writing — not including private works and sketches — an estimated 654 capture Grand Canyon, 158 of which appear here.”

The rest of the book details Walters’ journeys to the Grand Canyon — and elsewhere — to paint, and how life events helped shape the stories of his paintings.

“He turned [the original manuscript] apart and resembled it,” Walters said of Foreman’s work, which began shortly after the COVID lockdowns in 2020. “I said, ‘write the first chapter for me,’ and it was exactly the book I wanted.”

“It took us about three years to actually write the manuscript, because, of course, he was open to changes, and would let me change whatever I wanted,” Walters said.

Now the book has been written, designed and edited, and printed at a press in Italy.

Walters is hosting a showing of 20 pieces of his art, and a book signing event at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of Western Art on Saturday, Jan. 17. The retrospective will include mostly paintings of the Grand Canyon and Sedona.

While standing in his dining room, Walters gestured to several paintings laid out neatly on his table.

“I’m doing a limited edition set of the book,” he said. “So it’s leather-bound. … it comes in this casing with a print of a painting that comes with it.”

In the main room of his studio, he’s got two walls of full bookshelves, a large easel hanging from the ceiling and painting supplies. He also has a display of several swords and Spanish armor.

“Some of them are goofed up,” he said. “They don’t belong with the period of stuff I’m actually studying, but I’m getting [to] where I’m starting to actually recognize it and understand it.”

Mostly, he’s studying Spanish conquistadors, the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon. He’s read books on the early expeditions and is continuing to learn about them to paint them better and more accurately.

He pointed to a painting above a doorway that was one of his earlier conquistador paintings.

“There’s a lot of details and all this stuff, so I’m trying to learn about it,” he said. “I totally figured out that I got this one totally wrong, so I’m just going to cut his head off because I like the head.”

The main theme in Walter’s new book is the Grand Canyon. Many of his paintings of the Grand Canyon are in museums across the country, including the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

Sprinkled throughout the book are pages written by people who have known Walters through his artistic career or his life. Tom Dailey, his life partner, was one of them.

“To live with an artist is not living with an ordinary person,” Dailey wrote.

“Now I will live with that for the rest of my life,” Walters said.

While they’re certainly different people, Dailey said he’s learned a lot by living with an artist.

“Be alert to the whims of the weather and be ready at the spur of the moment to get up before sunrise to drive to Grand Canyon because weather disturbances mean good painting days,” Dailey wrote.

Walters said one of his favorite parts of the book, though, is the chronology, which lists his life achievements in a timeline and provides pictures from the larger events.

“Not too many people can watch themselves age in five pages,” Walters said.

“Resilience: The Life History and Grand Canyon Art of Curt Walters” is available for $85 online at unmpress.com or curtwalters.com.