The declarative stripes and zigzags that populate Walker’s recent works, made with emphatic, nested strokes of a loaded brush, can be read in many ways. They announce the abstractness of the picture, asserting its existence as a confrontational object with their generous scale and unabashed geometry. For anyone aware that Walker’s history includes an extended sojourn in Australia, the repetitive, varied patterns of the stripes and angles might provoke associations with Aboriginal or tribal art of the Pacific, which sometimes had repercussions in his earlier work. But these elements take on other meanings, in relation to coastal Maine. The insistent but irregular rhythms of the nested stripes can be seen as graphic versions of the changing rhythms of how the ocean meets the shore, as waves or tide, while the dizzying repetitions of the strokes can be interpreted as distillations of the hypnotic effect of breakers. And more. Or less.
- Karen Wilkin, 2018
