John Walter

Burnt Sienna Face

Year 2023
Medium Acrylic ink on cold-pressed watercolour paper
Dimensions 30.5 x 23 cm
Top pick Selected by Roger Malbert, curator & writer, & Emma Cousin, artist

About the work

From a body of work that I have been making since September 2023, which explores complex arrangements of ornament using a limited palette of colours, and incremental tonal relationships. This is a closeup on an imaginary head. It is a soup of ornament. It is an eye gym.

Date and country of birth

1978, GB

Career Highlights

John Walter was Sainsbury Scholar at The British School at Rome, attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, was artist-in-residence at Kavli Institute for Nanosciences Delft, and was inaugural artist-in-residence at QBI, San Francisco. He is currently a member of the Arts Council Collection acquisitions committee. He won the Hayward Curatorial Open for Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness. Arts Council Collection and The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool have collected his work.

Selected exhibitions: NODE MULCH, SOMArts, San Francisco (2023); Jezreel’s Tower, Exeter Phoenix (2021); CAPSID, Southwark Park Galleries and HOME (2018).