Robert Waltsak

Trinity Church, original impressionist landscape

Robert Alan "Bob" Waltsak was born in 1944 in Newark, New Jersey where he grew up. At an early age, he gravitated to the arts, studying at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts (NSFIA), The School of Visual Arts in New York, and later at the Ridgewood Art Institute with John Philip Osborne. After spending two years in the army, Waltsak returned home and got a job in an advertising agency, then he got started with woodworking because he wanted to make his own bedroom set. So after he began to work in a furniture store to learn this trade, Waltsak eventually gathered enough knowledge and skills to open up his own shop. A cabinet-making company in Wayne, New Jersey, initially worked mostly with pine furniture and followed with built-in and high-end furniture. Assisted by his son Josh, some of Waltsak's furniture work has made it to the Broadway stage in the productions of "Wicked" and "Fortune's Fool." Besides being an accomplished carpenter, Waltsak's avocation is landscape paintings, where he draws his inspiration from the works of the Hudson River School, and the palette he uses was originally developed by the late Frank Vincent Dumond. Today, Waltsak's award-winning paintings are held in numerous private and corporate collections and have been exhibited at the Hastings on Hudson Museum and at the Ridgewood Juried Art Show. As a multiple-prize winner at the Hudson River Art Association and the Ridgewood Art Institute, he has been represented by galleries in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut and also offered art classes at his home studio in Little Falls, New Jersey.