Page 42 - Studio International - September 1968

well as distance is a necessary feature of the spectator's encounter where they might have been expected to narrow the scope of the
with the various elements in each work. painting as a whole. In fact, within the disciplined structure of his
Thus within a format that emphasises stability, mutability is paintings, Walker's colour attains extremes of mystery, brashness,
directly experienced. Enlarged scale multiplies a given content, in- ripeness, luxury and glamour that would themselves justify lengthy
troducing distortions and heightening the already disorientating discussion.3 A series of pale green-yellow paintings of 1967-68 shows
contrast between extremes of nearness and distance seen not only at an ability to give weight, resistance and substantiality to these
the same time but often interchangeably. Each painting's elements are delicate colours, almost as if they were dark reds and browns, which
so arranged that to read it at all involves entering it (rather than is paralleled only by Richard Smith, though with quite different
being enveloped by it), to encounter any element with particular effect in Smith's centralized formats or logical formal progressions.
directness. Although the flat picture surface is as often affirmed as This affluent use of colour is prevented from overbalancing the
denied, this type of confrontation has remarkably many analogies picture towards descriptiveness by the discipline provided by the
with current sculpture. The sense of an area of space and ground so grid, sometimes (as in the long, low paintings) by the picture for-
occupied by particular forms as to intensify consciousness of their mat, and by the continuous recall to material facts provided by
length, stretch, contact and interrelation is central, as is the ability Walker's exposed methods of painting. His ways of applying paint
of any component element to be at once a contained, commonplace and the staccato contrasts among different passages in the same work
form and yet almost gesturally assertive in its relational deployment. invite and almost demand particularly strong scrutiny of the
But one senses also a link with less formalist sculpture in the implica- material itself. Brushed, rubbed, loosely stained, splashed and cloud-
tion of tactile yield which Walker's sensuous, soft-focus colour gives ed paint areas, which as categories are hallmarks of earlier periods,
to his forms—forms with a bottom-heavy thrust, so disposed as to seem here entirely free of the restrictive associations that have re-
carry deliberate overtones of compositional clumsiness, obtuseness cently deterred younger painters from using them. Spraying thinly
and strangeness. through sheets of close wire mesh produces passages that are both
The tension of which Walker has spoken, which is at the heart of part of the overall ground and apparently detached from it; ac-
his work, is inseparable from the fact that each painting holds in- centuating a long-standing tendency of the ground in his work to be
numerable contradictions in a complex and obtrusive balance. both yielding and resistant simultaneously, these areas are barely
Each work conveys a feeling of unnatural suspense, a product of the substantial yet obstinately material. They produce yet another level
interaction between the almost defiant awkwardness and rule- of depth in pictures already complex with grids and with object-
breaking of Walker's formal decisions, juxtaposition of techniques shapes that stand forward through a dense solidity of paint particles
and conventionally exaggerated scale, the simple exposure and produced by the other extreme of the spraying technique.
directness of each depicted element, and the yet other implications Improvisation and fluidity of touch play perhaps a larger role in
of the curious colour relationships. Again, there is the contrast be- Walker's work as a whole than in that of any equally gifted younger
tween emphasis on the physical feel of the canvas expanse itself as a painter. The particular format and vocabulary of forms he has
thing stretched out taut with sloping sides, and all that is occurring appropriated afford a remarkably wide range of possibilities within
on and in it. Walker's paintings force restless changes of focus; the their own clear limits, increasing (as has been discussed) the ten-
overall mood they produce hints, through its front of impassivity and dency of any element to imply more than one role interchangeably.
detachment, at the improbable, the desperate and the hectic. This helps explain the complexity of effect and complete assurance
This suspense operates in conjunction with numerous devices of Walker's drawings, despite their quantity, their speed of execution
calculated to neutralize expectation of any emotional or dramatic and their usually pronounced gesturality. Though in no way to be
potential. The emphasis on material facts, already mentioned, is equated with the paintings, they do make clear with an immediacy
intensified by the use of several media and techniques in a single unusual for drawings the relationships and interactions they propose
work, so that each stands out all the more specifically through con- in a different medium, and the largeness of scale involved.
trast. The very expanse of each painting tends to divert attention In late 1967 and early 1968 Walker's work, basically a develop-
from the striking whole to the parts, which are highly dispersed. Yet ment within the vocabulary already evolved, shows sufficiently
Walker can also use size as a neutralizing factor in an opposite complex elaborations of these ideas to merit an article on its own.
manner. A long painting like Reach 1967, far from filling the field of There are occasional square paintings in which depicted rectangu-
vision, is only 3½ feet high, its bottom edge hung only an inch from the lar forms have a spatial and functional freedom deriving from old and
ground. Adding to this its deliberate positioning in a fairly narrow testing new devices in what remains the fundamental trapezoid
space, discouraging an overall view, it carries format to the point of canvas shape. Within the trapezium the rectangle is now being
unobtrusiveness. Yet it combines the neutrality of first impact of a given its most assertive role so far. When a single space in the recti-
sideboard with spatial effects disorientating not only laterally but linear grid is separately coloured, an improbable solidity is suggested
also in the suggestion given when looking down at the painting of in what one instinctively tries to read as a void; this is specially
upward gaze to distant heights. disturbing when it is hot, heavy and high up in the grid, vying for
The same combination of equally deliberate neutralization with attention with the activity along the bottom edge. In some paintings
openness of effect marks Walker's use of colour. One reads it as each such section of the grid has been given a different colour, which
intensely referential without, in the context of these paintings, being compounds the paradox since the grid still operates as a grid in
able to particularize references. Walker manages to use colour com- relation to all the other shapes. Attenuated rectangles, more nearly
pletely abstractly yet also as a major factor in the creation in each columns, are occasionally superimposed in front of the grid and
picture of a situation that comes across as more particular than can detached from the picture edge, while others sit heavily like up-
usually be achieved in either figurative or abstract painting. That he right slabs along the bottom edge.
uses only a few similar elements in each painting makes this more Walker's appointment as Gregory Fellow at Leeds University in
remarkable. His choice of colours, which have extraordinary body, October 1967 bought a larger studio enabling him to increase his
richness and depth, has something flagrant and blatant about it, basic trapezium size to 9 x 18 feet and his long low truncated trape-
deliberately defiant, to positive effect, of compromise and polite zium to 3- x 221 feet. This accentuated the sharpness of identity of
taste. Its use is sufficiently confident and its context sufficiently sur- the widely separated depicted shapes, giving to each an even stronger
prising to make the crowded associations and superficially indulgent sense of incident.
quality of these colours constructive (because paradoxical) elements, Late in 1967 the depicted shape of the base-hugging trapezium
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