Walker belongs squarely in the tough-guy visionary camp of postwar
British painting, along with paint-splashers and big-tube squeezers like
Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton. Like them, he mixes the coloristic exuberance of School of Paris
painting with a Wordsworthian belief in nature�s spiritual power. At a
time when the medium�s many young (and not-so-young) practitioners are
busy googling images of lesser-known midcentury abstraction to make
compositions that carry oomph, as can be seen in the Museum of Modern
Art�s exhibition �The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World�
in New York, Walker, who is 75, creates paintings as fresh and powerful
as the artists in that show without need for the Internet.
“John Walker: Looking Out To Sea,” Alexandre Gallery, Midtown, New York, NY. (Note that the gallery has relocated to 724 Fifth Avenue.) November 5 through December 25, 2015.
Related posts:
Idiosyncrasy: Philip Guston in 2012
Susan Rothenberg’s disparate images
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I love that Walker's work is rooted in his experiences with the natural world… While an appreciation of other artwork can be a great catalyst, these seem to intuit relationships with natural form, light, and energy. I've never seen his work before- it's pretty wonderful!