Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fr. Walsted was educated in Massachusetts and Oregon and took his B.S. from the University of Oregon in Eugene in 1956. He had switched his major from Architecture to History when he discovered in himself a vocation to the priesthood and began to prepare for seminary.

He received his theological degree from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, and was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood in 1959 in the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon. He served parishes in Salem and Portland, Oregon, before entering the Order of the Holy Cross in 1963.

Fr. Walsted had always had an interest and facility for art. While at the University of Oregon, he was fascinated by the collection of Byzantine art in the University's Oriental Art Museum. The art of Eastern Orthodoxy was very much in disfavor in art circles of the time. Western notions of originality prevented critics from attaining an appreciation of Greek and Russian religious art.

Because of this lack of interest in the techniques and purpose of iconography, Fr. Walsted embarked on a lengthy self-education through reading and trial and error. He wrote his first icon in 1962 in Portland. It is lost to history because, not realizing the difference between gesso and plaster, he used plaster, and the work came to pieces shortly thereafter.

While a member of the Order of the Holy Cross, Fr. Walsted gained knowledge and skill in the techniques of preparing the boards. His early works were done in acrylic pigments, still often used by iconographers because the acrylic medium approximates to some degree the effects of egg tempera and is much easier to use. The motherhouse of the Order in West Park, New York, houses many of these pieces, including a nine-foot altar cross in the chapel

In the early 1970s, when he had returned to Portland to nurse his stepmother through her final illness, he was introduced to egg tempera and has worked in nothing else since. At the Order's retreat house in Santa Barbara, California, Fr. Walsted worked under Frank Dorland, an expert on the conservation and restoration of both Western and Eastern panel paintings.

Through his study and work in this period, Fr. Walsted developed a particular expertise in the Novgorod School of Russian iconography of the 14th through 16th centuries. The lavish use of gold leaf and brilliant cinnebar pigment and the bold and direct compositions of the Novgorod School of this period characterize most of Fr. Walsted's icons.

Fr. Walsted left the Order of the Holy Cross in 1977 and came to New York City where he has lived since. From 1982 until his retirement in 1994 he served as priest-in-charge and Rector of Christ Church, Staten Island. Through these years he has completed several hundred icons for churches and private collections.

In recent years, while continuing to produce primarily icons in the Russian style, Fr. Walsted has also explored the techniques of Flemish and North Italian styles of the early Renaissance. Western panel paintings before the 16th century were also executed in egg tempera.

Exhibitions of Fr. Walsted's works have been mounted at Scottsdale, Arizona, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Staten Island, New York, and the Church of the Transfiguration, the Seamen's Church Institute and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, all in Manhattan.

Top of page