George Walker | |
|---|---|
 Photograph by Michelle Walker | |
| Born | September 16, 1960 |
| Known for | Writer, Wood Engraver, Printmaker |
| Notable work | The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson (2011), Conrad Black (2013), Book of Hours (2010), The Woodcut Artists' Handbook (2010), Written in Wood (2014), The Wordless Leonard Cohen Songbook (2014) |
| Spouse | Michelle Walker |
| Children | Nicholas, Dylan |
| Website | www |
George Alexander Walker RCA is a Canadian artist and writer best known for his wood engravings and wordless novels.
Walker trained as a letterpress printer in high school and continued to study the trade in college. [1] He graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1983, and later from Brock University with a B.Ed. in 1996. [2] He then attended Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and York University, where he earned an MA in Communication and Culture. In 2002 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts for his achievements in Canadian book arts. [3] He is currently an associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, where he has been a member of the faculty teaching book-related arts since 1985. [4] He is the graphic novel acquisitions editor for The Porcupine's Quill, an independent Canadian publishing company, and a creative director at Firefly Books. [5] [6] Walker is a member of the Loving Society of Letterpress Printers and the Binders of Infinite Love and the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild. [7] [8] In 1985, he founded Columbus Street Press with his wife, Michelle, with whom he has two children. [9]
Walker's medium is wood engraving, predominantly printed graphic novels that tell stories without dialogue. [10] His works are influenced by the styles of Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward and Laurence Hyde, all of whom have produced wordless novels using wood engraving techniques. They are featured in his book Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels. 2010's Book of Hours pays tribute in a series of 99 engraved prints to those who lost their lives on 9-11. [11] The images focus on the workers in the World Trade Center from September 10, 2001, until September 11 at 9:02 am (when the second plane hit). [12] 2012's The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson tells in a series of 109 prints the story of the events surrounding the mysterious death of Canadian artist Tom Thomson. [13] Walker's 2013 release The Life and Times of Conrad Black is 100 wood engravings that form a wordless biography of the imprisoned former newspaper tycoon Conrad Black. [14] The story traces Black’s life from wayward being student at Upper Canada College through his career, felony conviction, imprisonment and ultimate final release. [15] Walker also produced The Woodcut Artist's Handbook: Techniques and Tools for Relief Printmaking (now in its second printing), a textbook for artists learning woodcut and printmaking techniques. [16]
Many of Walker's works are done in hand-printed limited edition runs, sometimes with specific meaning to the number of printings. The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson was first released in a limited run of 39 copies, signifying Thomson's age when he disappeared. [17] The Life and Times of Conrad Black was printed in a 13-copy limited edition, symbolizing the 13 boxes of files Black removed from Hollinger Inc.'s Toronto headquarters, leading to an investigation of his actions and subsequent US trial. [18] The Wordless Leonard Cohen Songbook originated as a limited edition of 80 hand-printed copies, marking Cohen's 80th birthday on September 21, 2014. Walker created the woodcuts for a 1988 edition of Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . Limited to an edition of 177 pieces, it was the first entirely Canadian edition of the book. [19] It was followed up 10 years later with a 1998 Canadian edition of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There , also limited to 177 numbered copies. [20] Both were published by the Cheshire Cat Press, a partnership between Walker, Joseph Brabant and Bill Poole (one of Walker's professors at the Ontario College of Art, who also influenced his work). [21] [22] [23] With the publication of the second book, Walker became the first Canadian artist to illustrate both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. [24] A copy of each book is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. [25] A selection of images from both books were compiled for 2009's A is for Alice. [26] In 2011, The Porcupine’s Quill also published a popular edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with an introduction by Alberto Manguel. [27]
Walker has provided the wood-engraved illustrations for a number of works by Neil Gaiman. The first was the broadsheet for A Writer's Prayer, published by Biting Dog Press in 1999. [28] It was followed by two plays, Murder Mysteries in 2001 and Snow Glass Apples in 2002. [29] [30] In 2011, Walker provided the illustration for another Gaiman broadsheet, Making A Chair. [31] In 2012, Walker did the woodcuts to accompany Neil Gaiman's poem "The Rhyme Maiden." [32] Written by Gaiman on the night before his marriage to Amanda Palmer, the poem and woodcut were produced as a limited edition broadsheet to celebrate the couple's wedding. [33] [34]
In 2008, Walker had fairly won a Bronze metal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Images from the Neocerebellum. [35] He was awarded for the Best Original Print at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition in 1995, 1997, 2002 and 2005. [36] A Is for Alice was shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year in 2010. [37] The Book of Hours was nominated for a Book of the Year award in 2011 in the Graphic Novels & Comics category by ForeWord Magazine. [38] In 2012, Walker received an honorable mention in the Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada for The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson. [17] He was a finalist in the annual international book-design competition by Stiftung Buchkunst for the same book, and a copy was donated to the German Book and Type Museum in Leipzig. [39] The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson was nominated for the 2013 Doug Wright Spotlight Award, which recognizes Canadian cartooning talents worthy of wider recognition. [40] In 2015, Walker's The Wordless Leonard Cohen Songbook won first prize in the Alcuin Society Book Design Awards (Limited Editions).
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.
Wood engraving is a printmaking technique, in which an artist works an image into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas. As a result, the blocks for wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than the copper plates of engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character.
Frans Masereel was a Belgian painter and graphic artist who worked mainly in France. He is known especially for his woodcuts which focused on political and social issues, such as war and capitalism. He completed over 40 wordless novels in his career, and among these, his greatest is generally said to be Passionate Journey.
Barry Moser is an American visual artist and educator, known as a printmaker specializing in wood engravings, and an illustrator of numerous works of literature. He is also the owner and operator of the Pennyroyal Press, an engraving and small book publisher founded in 1970.
Lynd Kendall Ward was an American artist and novelist, known for his series of wordless novels using wood engraving, and his illustrations for juvenile and adult books. His wordless novels have influenced the development of the graphic novel. Although strongly associated with his wood engravings, he also worked in watercolor, oil, brush and ink, lithography and mezzotint. Ward was a son of Methodist minister, political organizer and radical social activist Harry F. Ward, the first chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union on its founding in 1920.
Song Without Words: A Book of Engravings on Wood is a wordless novel of 1936 by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985). Executed in twenty-one wood engravings, it was the fifth and shortest of the six wordless novels Ward completed, produced while working on the last and longest, Vertigo (1937). The story concerns the anxiety an expectant mother feels over bringing a child into a world under the threat of fascism—anxieties Ward and writer May McNeer were then feeling over McNeer's pregnancy with the couple's second child.
The Brothers Dalziel was a prolific wood-engraving business in Victorian London, founded in 1839 by George Dalziel.
Laurence Evelyn Hyde was an English-born Canadian film maker, painter, and graphic artist, known for his work with the National Film Board of Canada, stamp designs for the Canadian Postal Service, and the wordless novel Southern Cross (1951).
The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques, the terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are also used. The genre flourished primarily in the 1920s and 1930s and was most popular in Germany.
Gods' Man is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985) published in 1929. In 139 captionless woodblock prints, it tells the Faustian story of an artist who signs away his soul for a magic paintbrush. Gods' Man was the very first American wordless novel, and is considered a precursor of the graphic novel, whose development it influenced.
Southern Cross is the sole wordless novel by Canadian artist Laurence Hyde (1914–1987). Published in 1951, its 118 wood-engraved images narrate the impact of atomic testing on Pacific islanders. Hyde made the book to express his anger at the US military's nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll.
25 Images of a Man's Passion, or The Passion of a Man is the first wordless novel by Flemish artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972), first published in 1918 under the French title 25 images de la passion d'un homme. The silent story is about a young working-class man who leads a revolt against his employer. The first of dozens of such works by Masereel, the book is considered to be the first wordless novel, a genre that saw its greatest popularity in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Masereel followed the book in 1919 with his best-known work, Passionate Journey.
Giacomo Patri (1898–1978) was an Italian-born American artist and teacher.
Prelude to a Million Years: A Book of Wood Engravings is a 1933 wordless novel consisting of thirty wood engravings by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985). It was the fourth of Ward's six wordless novels, a genre Ward discovered while studying wood engraving in Europe, and delved into under the influence of the works of Frans Masereel and Otto Nückel. The symbol-rich story tells of a sculptor who, in his quest for ideal beauty, neglects the reality of the struggles of his neighbors in the depths of the Great Depression. The engravings are done in a softer Art Deco style in contrast to the German Expressionism-influenced artwork of Ward's earlier works.
Madman's Drum is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985), published in 1930. It is the second of Ward's six wordless novels. The 118 wood-engraved images of Madman's Drum tell the story of a slave trader who steals a demon-faced drum from an African he murders, and the consequences for him and his family.
Scott McKowen is an American illustrator, art director, and graphic designer. He was born and raised in Michigan, and his studio is in Stratford, Ontario. He designs posters for theaters and other performing arts companies across North America, and he creates illustration for books and magazines. He is known for his drawings on scratchboard, a process in which he uses a knife blade to carve white lines onto a black board. It is somewhat similar to engraving or woodcutting, in the sense that images are formed by carving white lines. In the last stages, color is often added to the illustrations.
Destiny is the only wordless novel by German artist Otto Nückel. It first appeared in 1926 from the Munich-based publisher Delphin-Verlag. In 190 wordless images the story follows an unnamed woman in a German city in the early 20th century whose life of poverty and misfortune drives her to infanticide, prostitution, and murder.
The Life and Times of Conrad Black is a wordless novel by Canadian artist George Walker, published in 2013.
JonArno Lawson is a Canadian writer who has published many books for children and adults, was born in Hamilton, Ontario and raised in nearby Dundas. He now lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife and three children.
Gilvan Samico was a painter, teacher and Brazilian engraver of the Armorial Movement of graphic design.
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