sewn paper
e-mail the Artist
Art / Wood Engraving
April 2000
176 pages
ISBN 0-88984-214-0
$15.95
The Inverted Line
George A. WalkerPrintmaker George A. Walker has assembled into one volume a collection
of wood engravings that he has made during his career as an artist. He
says in the introduction ...
`As a printmaker I've cut, scraped, carved, inscribed and pierced
my way into literally dozens of materials to make images at one time or another, though I've always
found myself coming back again and again to make marks in wood. There is something
about the polished surface of a block of end-grain maple
that simply begs to be scratched,
and in so doing provides for the artist an
experience utterly distinct from making woodcuts or
linocutting in which
parting tools and gouges are used, as opposed to the more exotic tools used in engraving with names
like spitsticker, tint tool, lining tool and lozenge-shaped graver.
`I had never really considered myself a wood engraver as such, but I've always
been engaged with printmaking in one form or another and found myself inevitably making
engravings on wood as a convenient means of illustrating my artists' books. Eventually I surprised
myself when I realized that I had, quite unintentionally, made several hundred engravings over
the years. I am sure a similar level of astonishment will be familiar to
anyone who has been preoccupied with a complex task over a long period of time only to recognize
that in the end, he or she has become inextricably identified with the task itself.
`I fell into wood engraving, therefore, much in the way one might fall into a pile
of autumn leaves -- not entirely by chance, but because the urge to jump in
overcame me.'
Why call this collection The Inverted Line? Walker
goes on to explain: `What I find seductive about wood engraving is the
inverting of the line and the image.... I call it the inverted line. There
are two reasons for this: the first is that the wood engraver is working
with white lines in negative space and the second is that the image is
backwards on the block before it's printed. However you see it, the black
line of the artist's pen is transformed by its translation on the matrix
to the impression on the paper. For every black line the engraver must
cut two white lines on either side. It is this inversion of the lines,
shapes and pattern that appeals to my temperament and begs to be explored.'
`George A Walker did not make it into An Engraver's Globe, and looking through this collection of his wood engravings I see again exactly why. An editor should not present as a fool one who has persisted in his folly to become wise if the wisdom cannot really be shown in the space available: better to omit than risk making him look silly. On the evidence of just a couple of works George Walker does look clumsy in a field where finesse is prized, perhaps to excess. But give him his head, as here, and you see an artist of sustained and wacky integrity half way between Posada and Krazy Kat. ...
`Is the work any good? Yes, of course it is. Of course, too, if you go for rough
trade in wood engraving, you end where you began: some of this does look like
beginner's work. But Walker does things with engraving I've not seen anyone else do:
look at Raguwl, Angel of Vengeance. His images of people in cars are
startlingly expressive: he can draw -- look at The Printer's hand and
the break of light around him; has Walker bodged the ear here to prove he can't
draw (so there!)? But he can and does. His small images have power and
sometimes even humour and tenderness, even though he presents himself as an obsessive, the Mad Hatter
of wood engraving.'
-- Simon Brett, Multiples: Newsletter of the Society of Wood Engravers
`George Walker is one of the most unusual wood engravers in
the country, and works in a distinctly contemporary idiom. Using a dentist's
drill, he routs out deep grooves which create bold graphic white lines,
providing a brilliant black-white contrast.'
- Patricia Ainslie, Glenbow
Museum, Calgary
Photo by Dylan Walker
George and his wife Michelle Walker founded Columbus Street Press in 1985. Their most recent imprint, Biting Dog Press, was established to publish some of the works of Neil Gaiman with Walker's illustrations. In addition, Walker creates several one-of-a-kind artist's books every year.
George Walker is best known for his illustrations for The
Cheshire Cat Press (established in partnership with Joseph A.
Brabant and William Poole), and is the first Canadian to
illustrate both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and
Through the Looking-Glass.
