juxtapositions 4 Print

JEFF WALKER BA(Hons) FRSA. Jeff Walker (born Scunthorpe, 1962) is a multi-media artist and creative therapeutic arts tutor. Studio at - Virginia wolfe's home - New art centre, Roche court sculpture park, Corn loft creative and therapeutic arts studio Stockbridge . Lives in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Compulsive collecting and forming assemblages of natural and man-made objects, combined with an intellectual curiosity - that embraces Creativity, philosophy, psychiatry, sociology and complex emotions - underpins his practices. The process of using materials, colour as a language Walker started his working life as a metallurgic technician within Scunthorpe’s steelworks. After taking voluntary redundancy he completed a foundation course in art, followed by a B.A. (Hons.) in 3-Dimensional Design at Brighton University. Over the last 30 years Walker has worked with wood (huge bowls carved from hurricane-struck trees); ceramics (hand-potted domestic ware to bizarre ‘trumpeting angels’) and multi-media assemblages constructed in the anarchic spirit of Dada. However, it is by working with paint and canvas that he finds his most poignant expression. In the 1980s Walker’s paintings were mostly representational. His subjects were wide-ranging - the corporeal body; fish, fruit; land, sea and urban-scapes depicted in dynamic juxtapositions of brilliant, thickly applied, colour. From 1987 Walker was invited by Commodore (American manufacturers of Amiga creative software) to review their creative programmes. Using photography, and drawing upon theories of early Russian film-makers and Freud’s lay analysis, he presented huge, photo-montage installations. Viewers were invited to interpret these abstracted works, layered with multiple references, and in so doing construct their own narratives. This work was exhibited in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Berlin and Holland. Since the early 1990s Walker’s canvases have encapsulated spontaneous, responses to the complexities of contemporary life. They are characterised by obsessive working and re-working, sometimes with collaged sections cut from aged maps or motifs torn from old journals. It is a process that culminates in abstract layers and combinations of colour, motifs and texture. Text is also expressed boldly in paint – statement include ‘We are all Cowboys’ or ‘BE QUIET!’ Others – a series of ovals in exquisite, glossy, colour combinations - are imbued with meaning when titled ‘Tranquilizer.