From Starving Author to Starving Artist

In his mid-sixties, he’s done ok writing, at least able to maintain a homesteaded ranch and a home in Southern California in the heart of car country. And now he’s taken on this new endeavor with a passion that probably matches or exceeds his experience as an artist. A new life as an artist renews the self, brining back a passion thought lost to the ages. Viagra for the creatively inclined, if you will.

Being an artist or illustrator (take your pick of the term, depending on your view of the artwork) is tougher than being a writer. Art is far more subjective than writing. There are those who think that so far, Wyss has not captured the excitement of the subject matter and that pending membership into the AFAS (Automotive Fine Arts Society) membership at this point is moot. Certainly the genre has it’s Picassos and Rembrandts, but Wyss’s work is good enough to deserve a second look, and though old he is still a young painter. After all, Winston Churchill didn’t really get going until he was in his seventies.

“I am a primitive,” Wyss says of himself. That’s using the term once applied to Grandma Moses, a sweet little old lady with no art training who would paint country scenes of barns and the like. When asked about her art training, she’d say she was untrained but just applying the paint according to the way she envisioned the art. “I start at the sky,” she would say in her little old lady voice, “and work downward.” Grandma had years of experience with barns and farmhouses; Wyss has over 47 years of experience photographing cars and writing about them. There is no doubt that Wyss ‘gets it’ like Grandma Moses got barns.

Part of it comes from growing up in Detroit, the Stuttgart, Coventry and Turin of America all rolled up into one. Or at least it was so in the early 1960s, when the sounds of cars drag racing on Woodward Avenue kept him awake at night. “I’d be trying to sleep, I’d hear Hemis going up against big block Chevys at each stoplight.” Poor Wally. “Then I began meeting people like GM VP in charge of styling William Mitchell and that began my conversion into a full blown gearhead.” Saint Paul of the Wheels had nabbed another one, and the conversion was complete when he saw photos of the new Iso Grifo A3C in Autosport.

After college and a short stint in the Army, Wyss started writing ad copy for the GM accounts. In 1969 he moved to California to work for CAR LIFE magazine, then hopped over to Motor Trend where he was associate editor for two years. In the late 70s, taking the advice of Tom Warth, then head of Motorbooks International, he wrote a book on Cobras, called Shelby’s Wildlife. It sold 50,000 copies, or roughly ten times more than the average automotive title. Warth, like many we talked to, described Wyss as a “character”. “We certainly sold a lot of the that book as it was the first about the cars (as opposed to the man),” said Warth. Wyss recalled that it was in print for a whopping seventeen years!

Many other books followed, including titles on Ferrari, Porsche, and his most frequently covered marques Shelby, Cobra and GT40. In 2007 he wrote SHELBY: The Man The Cars The Legend and a photo archive called COBRA & SHELBY MUSTANG, so he’s still very much in the game.

But then there was that desire to paint. Like golf, it gets to people. They just have to paint.
Wyss started by accident. “‘I had just finished a book on Shelby and heard there was a car show in Beverly Hills. I bought a 99 cent box of water paints and made a portrait of Shelby and finished it in time to go to the show. At the show I met a publisher, of Makes & Models magazine, and after selling him the book I showed him the painting. He bought that, too.” His next few watercolors were all on Cobras, Shelby himself or Shelby Mustangs and GT40s. “I figured the art would promote the books and vice versa,” Wyss says. He uses photographs for inspiration having more than 10,000 pictures in his archive which spans his 47 years as a journalist. Wyss also is beginning to market prints from his huge archive and we’ve included an image of the Alfa 33 works publicity shot from early in the 33’s racing career.

“At first I didn’t have a style I could call my own. I am a big fan of several artists in the AFAS, but I know I need to develop my own style.”

Rejecting the detailed scenes now in vogue, he tried rendering the background less important with a neutral color and lately is concentrating on the car itself , having a white or light color background and then working in some fine line drawing atop the paint like Ken Dallison. “But I am still working with printers to see if the fine ink lines reproduce well. I am pretty happy with my “Ferrari 500 Mondial at Monterey” as an example of my newest method.” What gave him confidence in his own art work was meeting a former gallery owner making giclee (pronounced ghee-clay), it is a painting transformed to a print on canvas). “He was able to translate my small watercolors–which are only 8″ x 10″ onto larger canvases, measuring 20″ x 24.” He began limited editions and now has some available for purchase on Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghini, and of course, Cobras, Shelbys and GT40s. Recently, he also found a low cost way to mount and copy prints on a hard surface so they can appeal to a larger audience. Wyss’ prices–most mounted numbered prints are around $74– are far below that of the AFAS crowd.

No matter what the opinion of the artwork, a crucial test is to find out whether or not a painting will actually sell. Are people willing to put out $300 plus for an unknown artist who is selling a print on canvas? His work was first displayed in the Amsterdam Gallerie in Carmel and presently you can find several examples on the walls of World Class Motoring, a connoisseur’s automotive accessory store in Agoura, CA. There, owner Eddie Kosakoski told us that although no art critic, he liked Wyss’s paintings. “I like the style and he’s got some good angles.” But apparently the customers also like what they see and are willing to pay about $300 per giclee. “We’ve been selling his work for about six months now, and it is definitely moving.”

If Wyss’ paintings succeed like his first book, he will be one of the very few who have managed to make a living from both automotive writing and automotive art. Be sure to visit our VT store to see more art by Wyss.

Wallace Alfred Wyss can be contacted at
photojournalistpro@hotmail.com