John Walker

Who is John Walker?

John Walker is an English painter and printmaker.

Walker studied in Birmingham. Some of his early work was inspired by abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction, and often combined apparently three-dimensional shapes with "flatter" elements. These pieces are usually rendered in acrylic paint.

In the early 1970s, Walker made a series of large Blackboard Pieces using chalk 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.

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 is currently the head of the graduate painting program at Boston University.