James Faure Walker: Paintings of the Seventies and Eighties

About

‘Heron Island’ of 1984 is the key work in this exhibition, which includes watercolours and early digital works. In the seventies abstract painting was at the centre of an onslaught by critics of ‘modernism’. Some argued that painting was finished as an art form. Artscribe magazine gave artists a voice, campaigning for better critical writing. My painting was developing from a controlled to a more open and fluid character. I was ready for change. In 1983 I was invited out to Australia to be an artistin-residence in Melbourne and undertook a lecture tour. My ambition was to get to the Great Barrier Reef. This painting was the result. On returning to the UK, I no longer wanted the distractions of writing and editing, and I left Artscribe. Being underwater amongst that profusion of living colour was mesmerising – parrot fish, surgeon fish, angelfish, coral, reef sharks, manta rays. Nature, yes, but not the rolling hills of English landscape. It led me to computer graphics, and ever since I have been working with digital and physical paint in tandem, making for a richer mode of painting – I hope.’

James Faure Walker, June 2021

About James Faure Walker

James Faure Walker (born 1948, St Martins 1966-70, Royal College of Art 1970-72) was a founding editor of Artscribe magazine in 1976, going on to edit the magazine for eight years. Exhibitions include Stowell`s Trophy (1969), the Hayward Annual (1979), John Moores (1982, 2002), Serpentine Summer Show (1983), and a solo exhibition at the Whitworth, Manchester (1985). James Faure Walker has been using computers in painting since 1988. He exhibited eight times at SIGGRAPH, USA, and regularly at DAM, Berlin. He won the ‘Golden Plotter’ at Computerkunst, Gladbeck, Germany in 1998. His book ‘Painting the Digital River’ (Prentice Hall) was published in the USA in 2006, winning a New England Book Show Award. He has eleven works in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and his work was shown in the V&A’s ‘Digital Pioneers’ in 2009. He won the Royal Watercolour Society Award in 2013. James Faure Walker is the Honorary Curator of the RWS. Recent solo exhibitions include ARB, Cambridge; Class Room, Coventry; and Felix & Spear.

The fully illustrated ebook catalogue, ‘James Faure Walker, Works in Progress’, is available from https://issuu.com/felixandspear/docs/james_faure_walker_works_in_progress_catalogue_?fr=sMjUzMDM4OTkwNDA