‘A Navy Veteran Finds His Niche in the Art World’ by Ted Loos
2026
For an older generation of artists, serving in the military was a fairly common experience, one shared by Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and others.
These days, the contemporary painter Walter Price’s stint in the Navy makes him something of an outlier.
The experience informs his work, and it is one of several elements that gives Price a distinct profile in today’s art world, as does his particular literary take on naming his works and his shows.
Price’s paintings plumb the zone where figuration melts in and out of abstraction, and the color blue is his most frequently employed hue, but it is not necessarily used to imply melancholy. “You do four years in the Navy, and you see a lot of blue water,” said Price, standing in his studio in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. “The neighborhood I grew up in, people wore a lot of blue, too. But also it’s just like a color I like.”
He added, “It’s the most forgiving color for a painter, I would say. You can get away with a lot with blue.”
