Walter Magilton

Born 1933, my childhood was spent on a dairy farm in rural Victoria where I was surrounded with forest and all its wild creatures. I have never lost my desire to commune with nature in both a physical and spiritual way and this drives the way I paint.

Although trained in modern art schools with an avant-garde approach to art I usually work in a more traditional western style of painting as I can better express myself.

An art critic once reviewed a London exhibition and wrote:
'Walter Magilton’s landscapes fill the gallery with space, light and air. The farmlands and the countryside … whilst losing nothing of their Australian ruggedness is revealed with sensitive nuances one associates with the best in English landscape painting.'

After a rural upbringing Walter trained as an art and craft teacher with specialist studies in sculpture and jewellery making.

His whole life has been dedicated to his art and to teaching art—particularly painting and drawing.
He is a Fellow of the Victorian Artists Society and of the Australian Guild of Realist Artists and has a Diploma of Fine Art (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).

He has held many solo and group exhibitions in various Australian capital cities as well as five in England, and has won many awards for his work including 'Best of Show'.

Walter has been a Member of VAS for more than forty years and has participated in approximately two hundred exhibitions at the VAS Galleries, including several Artist of the Year Exhibitions.

He has been asked to judge many art shows, act as an art critic and demonstrate to art societies.
He is a versatile artist, works in a wide variety of subjects—portraits, landscapes, still life and in a wide variety of media including oil, watercolour, gouache and pastel.

He shares his studio home in Warrandyte, Victoria with his wife Denise Keele-Bedford, an installation artist who maintained a studio in Beijing for fifteen years.
They have collaborated on a number of ‘Public Art Projects’.

Walter conducts Art Classes in his studio with a high emphasis on drawing and design. Students are encouraged to develop their own style rather than become clones. Over four hundred students have attended his classes to date.

The life of an artist is a privileged one.

Walter Magilton VAS FVAS
September 2021