"The Hestwood," Ron Walotsky's painting for the April 1999 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, is among the five nominees for this year's Chesley Award for best magazine cover illustration.

Ron Walotsky: Well, you never know what books you're going to get. That's kind of up in the air. And sometimes you get a book that's just so cerebral and has no visual images in it that you've really got to pull something out of there. Sometimes if a guy is a very visual writer -- for example, when I was doing Piers Anthony covers I would take a lot of different images, because it was so visual, and put them together and make up a composite of all the characters or scenes within the book. But sometimes you get books that just don't have any visual elements. Then it gets tougher.  

What I usually do in those cases, I'll read the book. When I'm working I'll usually make thumbnail sketches, but if nothing is there, I'll read the book and just put it in the back of my mind for a few days and let it simmer. And something will come up, if I don't push it. When I try to force it, it's one thing, but I don't force that anymore. I don't worry about it if I don't get an idea right away, because I'll store it in back, then go do something else, and it will always be there. But not consciously. And it will slowly well up until something appears and I say, well, there's a seed of an idea, there's something that I can maybe pull something out of it. And when I start doing the sketch, then another element might form, and I work towards something. It will come at some point. 

Crescent Blues: Does it sometimes scare you that it doesn't seem to be coming as fast as it needs to? 

Ron Walotsky: Yes, but I don't worry about that too much anymore, because it will come. And if I try and worry about it, then it's not going to come. It's like when you meditate, as soon as you realize you're meditating, it goes away. So if you just forget about it and let it happen by itself, that works for me. 

Crescent Blues: Can you work on more than one piece at a time? Do you have multiple projects going or do you have to focus on one? 

Lord Valentine's Trilogy

Ron Walotsky: At one time I had nine projects going, which I think was my record, in all different stages -- reading a manuscript, doing sketches, doing finished paintings and a few other things. And everything was done on schedule and on time. So I like to work under pressure. I don't have a problem with that. Actually, it helps. If I've got a book and I've got two months to do it, and there's nothing else [due], three weeks before the book is due, I'll start thinking about it, then I'll feel rushed. So I'd rather know I have to get into something fairly quickly and work through it.  

Crescent Blues: Do you feel your style has changed over the years? 

Ron Walotsky: It's expanded. It's gone into different areas. I've always been a fine artist, which means I always wanted my paintings in science fiction and fantasy to stand up by themselves. That was very important to me -- that the paintings didn't need to be connected to a book. When people look at the paintings, I want them to just relate to the paintings. If it's not on the cover, then I don't want the book to affect it. I want people to see that, and I want the painting to be strong enough to stand on its own. So I do that, and I've always done my own painting. It's great to interpret somebody's work all the time, but I've got things that I need to say also, and even though I'm saying them in the illustration work, it's still the idea of interpreting someone else's concept. 

Crescent Blues: So you also do find time for your own original work? 

Ancient Warrior Masks painted on horseshoe crabs.

Ron Walotsky: I'll always do my original work. In fact, years ago I was on a panel with Michael Whelan, and we were talking about things like that. He was just doing the book covers, and he thought that would be it. But not that long ago he got very involved in just doing his own painting, and the fine arts. And we've talked about that. You have to express yourself in your own way, and not just where people are using you for your style or your talent. You want to do your own philosophy, your own images, what you consider important. 

Crescent Blues: Most of the paintings you had on exhibition at the 1999 World Fantasy Convention were acrylics. But you work in other media too, don't you? 

Ron Walotsky: I will work in other media, I work in watercolor, and I make masks out of horseshoe crab shells. 

Crescent Blues: Real horseshoe crab shells? 

Ron Walotsky: Yes, I will use the actual horseshoe crab shells. They're called "Ancient Warriors from Lost Civilizations." What's fascinating about them -- they're not a craft; they became a serious part of my art.  

Ancient Warrior Mask #1

The horseshoe crabs are 360 million years old, and have a copper-based blood, the only creature with a copper-based blood. They're related to spiders and not crabs, so they've got this strange history, and they're very spacey and surreal, just in their image themselves. I've even used them for designs for spaceships because they just have a certain flavor to them. I started painting them, and I make them like a shaman would be working on a mask for a ritual. So each mask is different. And I let the mask dictate what it's going to look like. I've been working on them for about ten years, in between the other work, and have probably done about forty Ancient Warriors over the years. 

Crescent Blues: So the sizes and the shapes differ, depending on how large the crab was when it shed the shell, or how battered it was when you found it? 

Ron Walotsky: Exactly. When I was living on the beach in New York, local kids used to call me the Crab Man, because if they found good crabs I would give them a dollar. So the kids on the block, if they found a good crab, would come and give it to me. 

Crescent Blues: Hey, there's this real weird guy who pays a dollar for those! Let's go collect them! 

Ancient Warrior Mask #2

Ron Walotsky: And horseshoe crabs do molt, so you don't have to kill them. There used to be so many millions on the beach in New York, they were used for fertilizer.  

Crescent Blues: Are they harder to find now? 

Ron Walotsky: No, they're down in Florida also. They're not as predominant as they used to be but they're still around a lot. And the Marineland laboratories down near St. Augustine do tests for the Navy on the eyes of horseshoe crabs, so I can get them there. And when someone retires that's working on them, they usually come to me and buy one of the horseshoe crabs as a going away present. 

Crescent Blues: So you're becoming well known among marine biologists. 

Ron Walotsky: Yes. As a matter of fact, there was a marine biologist here that was very interested, because I gave her one of my cards that had the picture of it. She was going to get in touch with me about getting one. 

Crescent Blues: My dad's a marine biologist. I'm going to tell him about this! It's fascinating. 

Ancient Warrior Mask #3

Ron Walotsky: Yes, I've sold a couple to marine biologists already. Seems to be a new area. 

Crescent Blues: What artists or influences do you think have most affected your work? What painters do you consider your roots? 

Ron Walotsky: There's a lot of painters from the early Renaissance on. I've always been heavily involved in painting and in the quality of paint. Rembrandt, [John Singer] Sargent, Franz Hals. Any of the early masters fascinate me.  

More contemporary people -- I think one of my favorite artists is Rene Magritte. One painting I did was a homage to him. He had a train coming out of a fireplace. To me it was a very mystical, strange image, with the smoke coming out.  

I had a show in the American Cultural Center in Paris, and they took us to the Georges Pompidou museum to see a retrospective on Rene Magritte. That was fascinating. And when I got back I had a job for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that dealt with a train going through time, and it just connected me to that. I always considered the painting I did a homage to Rene Magritte. 

Walotsky's Ancient Warrior series of painted hermit crab masks found their way into his painting for Rachel Pollack's Temporary Agency.

Crescent Blues: So he's one of the people you feel more... 

Ron Walotsky: I feel connected to Magritte's surreal images. Very simple but very strong. And he had a certain style and way of working that was fascinating to me. Also Frank Stella, an abstract artist, contemporary artist, someone that I admire. There are quite a few artists in the fine art field as well as artists in the fantasy or science fiction field -- like Brueghel and a lot of the old painters -- that are as surreal and strange as you can get. 

Crescent Blues: They fit the science fiction/fantasy genre. 

Ron Walotsky: Oh yes. There's so much history there. One thing I found fascinating, because I've always done my own work -- I was upstate in Pennsylvania at a new age health farm, and we were sitting outside drawing, doing watercolors in a field where the people were working. And it connected us immediately with [Vincent] Van Gogh when the potato pickers were there. You felt that you were part of that history. It's something you don't feel as much when you're sitting in your studio doing your work. But when I was out there and they're bending down, and you're doing these quick watercolor images. You felt a connection with the history of art, where it came from, where the people would go out and paint outdoors. And that was a wonderful feeling to me and connected me back to why I became an artist. It had a certain magic to it. 

Crescent Blues: There must have been several dozen top-notch fantasy artists at World Fantasy Con 1999. What happens when you guys get together?

 Ron Walotsky - Continued