Editor’s note: Airstream will host a fine art invitational exhibit of landscape art, May 31-June 5, at its headquarters in Jackson Center. This is one in a series of stories that will profile the artists whose work will be shown.

SIDNEY — Steven Walker, of Columbus, laughs as he agrees that his is a great problem to have.

He doesn’t have a lot of inventory — paintings — in his studio. As soon as they’re done, they get sent off to galleries, who keep wanting more.

“He’s a very fine artist in general, but he also does landscapes that greatly appeal to my clientele,” said Brenda Deemer, owner/director of B. Deemer Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky. “He puts his feelings into it and people recognize it. The feeling in the painting is evident to them. Each person reacts to art in a personal way. (What Steven paints) is familiar territory. The people it appeals to have some kind of nostaligia about it that’s tender to them.”

His popularity means that he’ll create a new work for the Airstream Fine Art Invitational, which opens at the end of the month.

“I usually don’t paint something specific for a show. I have to make sure I’m not compromising myself, and then I don’t want the piece afterwards,” he said by phone recently.

Walker works from a stockpile of photos he’s taken. To find the next painting, he rummages through the photos, sometimes choosing one that, as he says, he’s been “too chicken” to try to do in the past. It might have a lot of detail that he hasn’t figured out how to paint or its subject matter is something he’s afraid won’t sell.

“Eventually it has to be done,” he said. “I used to paint with an eye for selling. Now, it’s about me. If I like it, then somebody else has to. If I’m not behind the painting or excited about it, I can’t expect anybody else to be.”

Walker earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master of Fine Arts from Marywood University. He illustrated children’s books until a few years ago when he decided to paint full time.

That illustration background pops up in conceptual paintings that he does for himself.

“Every now and then, I like to get out of my norm, step out of my box. I think if I just kept painting for galleries day in and day out, it would get stale and formulaic,” he said. He appreciates the galleries who will accept whatever he paints.

“I can have fun, loosen up,” he added.

Sometimes a gallery will request a certain type of artwork.

“(They’ll) say, ‘Send me a sky painting,’” Walker said. He doesn’t immediately sit down to create what’s been asked for. But when he next completes a sky painting, he’ll send it off.

He works exclusively in oils and plots his paintings in his mind before anything hits panel or canvas.

“I’m a thinker,” he said. “(By the time I start,) I’ve already worked out what I want to get out of it.” He plays delightfully with perspective. One of his favorite places to look from is the floor.

“I lie on the floor. Is that more dynamic? More strange? If someone says, ‘That’s weird,’ OK then,” Walker laughed.

When he’s taking source photos, he self-edits.

“If I’m looking through the lens of the camera, if I have an inkling that I’ve seen it before, I don’t do it,” he said. “What twist can I put on it? I end up painting things that people say, ‘Who would have thought to paint that?’ I do.”

It’s not just perspective that Walker uses to put his own spin on things. Sometimes he’ll apply paint with unusual implements, including tools he finds around the house.

His work hours may seem unusual, too. The father of a one-year-old, he doesn’t paint at all on Mondays and only half a day Tuesdays because those times are filled with parenting activities. Currently, he and his family are getting ready to move to Georgia, so he’s turned down some offers for one-man shows because he doesn’t have the time to create the number of pieces the shows would require. He’s too busy packing boxes.

“I never do a 9-to-5 day. It just doesn’t work out that way,” Walker said. “Since my wife and I are both artists, it’s kind of 24 hours here.” When he’s not painting, he likes to watch movies and complete home improvement projects. In the past, he traveled a lot.

Walker won National Park Service residencies in the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in Iowa and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. As a result, his work is in their permanent collections. The Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Fairborn has a Walker in its collection, as does Bolling Air Force Base.

The artist was selected to participate in the little known Air Force Art Program from 2004 to 2010. He visited Kyrgyzstan, Belize, Alaska and Los Angeles, making paintings of military life.

When asked what artist’s work he would most like to own, Walker was momentarily stymied.

“This is like giving your speech at the Oscars and (being allowed) to thank just one person,” he said. It didn’t take him long, though, to say that he’d like to own something by one of his teachers, Peter Fiore.

“Before I took his workshop, I walked up to one of his (paintings of) trees. I looked at all the paint and thought, ‘This is a mess. But it works.’ I got to see him do a demonstration. I was shaking my head the entire time. It was like watching a magic trick,” Walker said.