John Walker (painter)

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For other persons named John Walker, see John Walker (disambiguation).

John Walker (born 1939) 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.

Around 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 makes allusions to earlier painters, such as Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet and Henri Matisse, either through the quoting of a pictorial motif, or the use of a particular technique. From around this time he began to use oil paint more. 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 job at the Victoria College of the Arts in Melbourne. He produced the Oceania series around this time which incorporates elements of native Oceanic art.

His recent work has been regarded as "infatuated with the showy effects" and "all-too-predictable" by (Boston Globe) New York Times critic Ken Johnson.

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

Walker was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1985.