Several times a day Walter Kamys climbs the wooden stairs to the
studio in his Sunderland home overlooking the Connecticut River to
return to an unfinished canvas or to add strokes to one of several sketches in progress. Since retiring from the UMass Amherst art faculty in 1988,
Kamys has devoted his time to his passion for painting. Hundreds of works stacked a dozen deep against walls and tucked neatly into shelves are the timeline of his life as an artist.
In addition to teaching at UMass, Kamys was also the first director of the university’s art acquisition program, which he began in 1962. Kamys acquired more than 900 paintings, drawings, and sculptures for the university’s collection; it now numbers more than 2,000. He became the first director of the University Gallery when it opened in the newly built Fine Arts Center in 1974.
See Kamys’ work at www.walterkamys.com, a Web site created by his sons to celebrate his 90th birthday last June.
