John Walker by Catherine Lampert and Alex Bacon

A long-overdue evaluation of John Walker’s work from the last half century

John Walker’s prolific painting career spans over sixty
years. His practice is inspired by a range of visual
references, notably the work of Goya, Matisse, the Abstract
Expressionists and the art of Oceania, as well as by shapes
and pattern motifs evoking history, time and place; however,
his work cannot readily be defined as abstract or figurative,
and his guiding thought is to have a conversation with the
art of the past to sound, feeling and touch. As Walker puts it,
the artist should listen to the sound of the brush. His desire
to ‘own’ a subject is present in his engagement with the
bay at Seal Point, Maine, near where he has lived for many
years: ‘It’s about capturing something no one else
has seen’.

Walker’s works are in major museums and private
collections internationally, and he has exhibited in
museums in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and
China. Despite winning the John Moores Painting Prize in
1976, and being nominated for 1985’s Turner Prize, he has
exercised a resistance to reputation-building, and visualizes
his studio practice as a slow, evolving process. His
uncompromising judgments infuse the work, and are one
reason he remains an artist respected and closely watched
by many other artists, increasingly by younger admirers.
Including essays by Catherine Lampert and Alex
Bacon, this immersive new monograph is a long-overdue
evaluation of Walker’s work from the past half century,
connecting key works with new perspectives and historical
influences, and examining the role of form, colour and
presence in his masterly paintings.

Details