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Florida Art<br />
By Bruce Marion<br />
MYK<br />
STALTER<br />
It isn’t very often that you meet someone<br />
who is multi-talented, say an amazing artist<br />
and musician as well. I’ve known Myk<br />
Stalter for about ten years and his artwork<br />
especially is still amazing. And anybody<br />
who is friends with Arlo Guthrie is ok in my<br />
book, too.<br />
Let me set the record straight: Myk was not a close friend<br />
of Arlo Guthrie but hung with him many times starting<br />
one Christmas eve decades ago when they met at the old<br />
Folk Singer shop in Sebastian.<br />
Myk Stalter is an artist with many skills, and a great<br />
cult of personality. Born in 1949, Myk has the youthful vigor<br />
that makes him charismatic and successful. He has lived<br />
in the same house for 28 years with just a couple of his own<br />
paintings and many more artists, his banjo and piano, too!<br />
Myk’s first music experience began at 12 when his<br />
uncle gave him a 4 string tenor banjo. He tuned it like a<br />
guitar and later progressed to real guitar and organ/piano.<br />
His first organ was an old blonde Lowrey where lessons on<br />
‘The Blue Danube Waltz’ pushed him more into guitar, the<br />
Beatles and his artwork.<br />
Meanwhile, Myk’s early artistic bent came out of carving<br />
and painting duck decoys at an even earlier age. Midstate<br />
Ohio, the Columbus area where he lived sported many<br />
waterfowl hunters and collectors who would sometimes buy<br />
Myk’s artwork decoys for $100 or more. Today the antique<br />
duck decoy market sometimes brings $15k for a special vintage<br />
carved and painted decoy.<br />
Maturing to abstracts and Picasso influenced expressionism<br />
by the time he was 20, the young Myk Stalter<br />
spread out more to do landscapes and became extremely<br />
familiar with the Florida Highwaymen style of oil painting.<br />
Debunked by some early on as ‘motel art’ these dozen<br />
or so painters had evolved through the 50s and 60s into a<br />
huge trend by the 70s and 80s. In modern times, these Highwaymen<br />
painters have been featured in People Magazine,<br />
PBS documentaries and at the forefront of the worldwide<br />
art auction arenas. Add e-bay, craigslist and many more<br />
southern antique dealers featuring these paintings and you<br />
have a huge movement in the art world and Myk was there<br />
learning from them, keeping a file of their paintings and<br />
becoming a member of the Indian River School of Art.<br />
While buying and selling and collecting these paintings<br />
Myk noticed a half dozen or more Poinciana scenes that inspired<br />
him to focus on and paint over 400 large oil paintings<br />
with that Poinciana scenario. I met him decades ago when<br />
he was rounding that number at 400 and by now is past 473.<br />
Unfortunately, Myk fell prey to the pressures of drug<br />
and alcohol abuse and admittedly today notes that he paints<br />
best sober and steady. This long spell of drug and alcohol<br />
abuse cost him a divorce and to sell off every painting he<br />
had or could paint. Spending money on drugs and booze instead<br />
of house rent and art supplies “did not help my painting,”<br />
Myk admits. Now a serious artist more than a musician<br />
, Myk credits his son Shawn Stalter for supporting and<br />
inspiring him all through these years.<br />
44 - Brevard Live <strong>April</strong> 2018
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