Sally Walker

Sally Walker took a long time to emerge from her cocoon and spread her wings as an artist.

(J. Michael Short/Special to E-N) Sally Walker, the San Antonio Art League's Artist of the Year, didn't begin painting seriously until she was in her 70s.
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Walker tells her quintessentially San Antonio story in an interview in the small catalog published for her one-woman retrospective, which runs through Oct. 16 at the San Antonio Art League Museum.
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As part of one of San Antonio's most prominent families, Sally Walker performed the role of the dutiful wife, and she says social functions still take up more of her time than she likes.

"I would always rather be painting," she said.
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Born in Jackson, Miss., Walker grew up in a family that enjoyed the arts, and she remembers taking Saturday morning art lessons as a young girl.Her mother loved music and encouraged her to take piano lessons, which led to a passion for opera.Her father was a banker and civic leader.When she was a teenager, she studied with a prominent Mississippi artist, Marie Hull, and won awards at the Tri-State Fair in Memphis.

Both of her parents died in the early 1930s when she was 15, and she went to live with an older sister and brother-in-law in San Antonio.She became a boarding student at Saint Mary's Hall, where she studied art.She went on to attend Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1940.

One month after graduation, she married Ganahl Walker.He served in the Air Force during World War II and, after a few years traveling to various airfields, the family settled in San Antonio in 1948.During the years when her family came first, Sally kept her art alive by taking workshops with various teachers.
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"I probably feel the most free working on butcher paper," Walker said."If you mess up, so what?"

But faced with her husband's lack of appreciation for abstract painting, she eventually gave it up for photography.In the catalog, she talks about her trips, including an exciting adventure in China not long after it opened to tourists, as well as journeys to Tibet and Russia.

"I've always had an adventurous spirit," Walker said.
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Sally will never grow old."

Walker started working with Mijangos and a small group of mostly older, female artists in his studio on South Presa Street about five years ago.

"It's a critique group," Mijangos said."It's not so much about showing people how to do it as it is giving feedback on what they do.It is so difficult for a person to cross that line from doing what they think an artist should do to expressing themselves freely as artists.Sally had very strong ideas and she began by asking lots of questions.
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"Actually, I think titles are superfluous," Walker said.
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"I had this photograph with four columns that really appealed to me, so I decided to see what I can do with it," Walker said.

Congratulations to Sarah Walker

Sarah went to London to meet the Duke of Edinburgh and receive her Gold Award on her 20th birthday on 23rd February.Amongst other things that she has done she has been on the cleaning staff at St. Mary,s, she has been working with special needs children, developing her skills on the violin, keep fit on a Sunday evening at church with physical achievements, she took part in a very strenuous expedition in Wales, having completed her training.She has also represented the Guides on an international camp abroad.

She is now studying at university.