American (1933)
About the artist:
An important contemporary printmaker, painter and creator of hand-made books, Anne Walker first studied art in Boston at Smith College. She then travelled to Paris in 1956 to complete her education at the atelier of the famous German artist, Johnny Friedlaender (b. 1912). Walker's first aquatints and etchings were created at his studio. In the early 1970's she made Paris her permanent home. Besides producing her own prints and paintings she has also created art in collaboration with her husband, Bertrand Dorny. Most of Anne Walker's original aquatints date from the 1970's and early 1980's. Although she was then living permanently in Paris, her aquatints and other works of art draw upon the forests and trees of New England as the primary source of inspiration. As one can see in such fine aquatints as Mabbin, however, these are not realistic portrayals of nature, but tonal compositions transformed by abstracted movements and memories. Beginning around 1989, Walker dedicated much of her oeuvre to the creation of what she terms, 'painted books'. Each page of these works is either painted and or aquatinted by hand in conjunction with the words and writings of her favorite authors, whom she states are, "living and phantom collaborators" * These include such authors as Emily Dickinson, Thoreau, Kenneth Koch, Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. In 2003 a major exhibition of Walker's painted books took place at the Boston Athenaeum. In 1956 Anne Walker's first solo exhibition was held at the Decordova Museum, Lincoln, MA. Since that time her aquatints, paintings and books have been the subject of one woman exhibitions at major galleries in San Francisco, Indianapolis, New York, Paris, Goteborg, Sweden, Lausanne, Switzerland, Essen, Germany, Luxembourg and Nice. She has also regularly exhibited with the Boston Printmakers, the Salon de Mai and La Jeune Gravure Contemporaine, Paris.
An important contemporary printmaker, painter and creator of hand-made books, Anne Walker first studied art in Boston at Smith College. She then travelled to Paris in 1956 to complete her education at the atelier of the famous German artist, Johnny