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Joe Warrior Walker:Quiet Spike
Joe Warrior Walker:Quiet Spike
2023
Oil, acrylic, pigment and sand on canvas
46 x 36 1/4 inches
1. Detail from ‘Quiet Spike’
Joe Warrior-Walker’s practice centres on an exploration of landscape, memory, and movement. In this painting, Warrior-Walker depicts familiar geometric forms, arranged in new and unexpected ways. Quiet Spike continues the artist’s reflection on memory, in particular drawing on the environments of his childhood, spent between south-west England and India. The painting is taken from a new series of works that experiment with a fluorescent coloured ground. Using this foundation as a departure point, the artist then builds up his composition in gestural layers which remain permeated by the vibrancy and luminosity of the highly pigmented underpainting.
Quiet Spike is the first work in which the artist incorporates sand, lending a heightened textural quality to the painting’s surface. Warrior-Walker is interested in the notion of illusionary space and how incorporating these new elements alter our conceptions of the composition. In particular, the artist sought to explore the painting in relation to the astral. The title of the work takes its name from the programme designed to suppress the loud bang emitted from an aircraft that is moving so fast it has created a sonic boom. This contradiction of loud vs quiet lends tension to the work and extends the artist’s own experimentation: using a vibrant tonal ground which is then layered and painted over.
THE STUDIO
B. United Kingdom1989
Biography
Joe Warrior-Walker’s practice centres on an exploration of landscape, memory, and movement. Warrior-Walker spent his childhood between the UK and his mother’s native India. The memories of these experiences run together in his work, with an interpretation of his current environment. His paintings reflect the impact of these contrasting environments. Warrior-Walker’s abstract compositions are an accumulation of different elements, aiming to capture the way in which we interact with our surroundings.
Warrior–Walker (born 1989) studied at The Chelsea School of Art before graduating with an MA from the UEA London. Warrior-Walker is the recipient of the Brenda Landon Portrait Prize and his work has been exhibited in London, Miami and Los Angeles.
He lives and works in Bristol, UK.