John Walker

John Walker is an English painter and printmaker. He has been called "one of the standout abstract painters of the last 50 years."

In the early 1970s, Walker made a series of large Blackboard Pieces using chalk first exhibited at the opening of Ikon Gallery, in Birmingham Shopping Centre, Birmingham in 1972 and the Juggernaut works which also use dry pigment. From the late 1970s, his work marked allusions to earlier painters, such as Francisco Goya, Édouard Manet and Henri Matisse, either through the quoting of a pictorial motif, or the use of a particular technique. Also during this time, he began to use oil paint more in his work. His paintings of the 1970s are also notable for what has come to be termed canvas collage - the application of glued-on, separately painted patches of canvas to the main canvas (see the external link below for an example and image).

After spending some time in Australia, Walker got a position at the Victoria College of the Arts in Melbourne. He produced the Oceania series around this time which incorporates elements of native Oceanic art.

Walker taught painting and was the head of the graduate painting program at Boston University.

Walker won the 1976 John Moores Painting Prize and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1985.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023