Maggie Walker

Artist Statement

For much of my life I have had an interest in systems of imaging that relates to networks, maps, arterial routes, nerve centres and webs suggesting multiple sites of connections. Most of my work explores grid structures through representation and abstraction. The images are often sequential and based on distorted, hand - made networks and grids. These constructions are also often the tools used to apply the paint to the surface of the support. Openness plays against closure, inside against outside, craft against industrial modes of production, the microscopic against the macroscopic, and the diagrammatic against the realistic in both the mark making and image making. There are direct and indirect references to cartography, geography and even the architectural in my work. The varying degrees and descriptions of containment, defined by borders, edges, walls, even the limits of the composition, could be read as metaphors for the complexities of map making, biology and landscape. Recent printmaking and drawings relate directly to the act of making and the warp and weft of the elemental construction of our natural and man-made environment. The work recognises the movement and small irregularities of lines and forms that are slowly made by hand and how small seismic glitches create rhythms and change the course and direction of a surface and piece of work.