Chris Gwaltney was born in Van Nuys, California. He sketched and drew from an early age and after an injury that left him on crutches for a year and a half, at the insistence of an artist friend, he started painting.

He attended California State University at Fullerton where he received Degrees in Bachelors of Arts in 1984 and then Masters of Fine Arts in 1986. He was approached by gallerist Diane Nelson with the offer of a solo show while hanging his Graduate Exhibition.

Gwaltney’s influences hail strongly from the Bay Area Figurative school and include such favorites as Nathan Olivera, Manuel Neri, Joan Brown, de Stabler and Joan Mitchell. In terms of mark making and palette, he looks to Deibenkorn, Jean Michel Basquiat, Twombly, de Kooning and Linda Stojak.

For Gwaltney, gestures and their implied emotions are more important than pure representation and finish. Gwaltney has used his entire family as source material; from the growth of his children, the resiliency and strength of his wife to the passing of both his father and his father-in-law. He feels these relationships are the most honest way to express layered emotion.