Particularly haunting, is the woman in Caryatid, who clutches her legs and looks intensely outward as if considering the abyss. She originated as a photo of a topless woman on a playing card, but Walker's painting has a forceful portentous gravitas. Like the architecture of the mediaeval dream garden in The Romance of the Rose, the column behind her is anthropomorphic, a stone woman in clown make-up. She’s no figure of fun either, stoically gazing into infinity. She might be on the verge of pronouncement, the voice to her companion’s visions. Yet Walker’s paintings are not oracles with answers, more like sphinxes posing questions.


Walker mentions, “The work ‘Caryatid’ takes its title from the greek sculpted female figure that supports a building- I am interested in this classical motif - woman as a column. There is a play in this painting between architectural form and the female body. In the painting I was looking at Giorgio de Chico’s early metaphysical paintings and costume design. The costumes have architectural motifs painted on to them and force the figure to interact with the architecture of the stage. In this painting there is further suggestion of architecture in the diagonal space at the top of the painting. The figure in the front is ‘girl-like’ 60’s pin-up, the body from a pack of playing cards that I have in the studio blue stockings, looking out. Her face is actress Giulietta Masina from a Fellini film Nights of Cabiria, she has a babyish face. or there is this sense that she is child-ish. I really enjoy that this figure poised next to a Caryatid, The title of the work is ‘Caryatid’.