The figures in The Garden, characteristically and emphatically linear, point to Walker’s training in drawing and align with the saints of medieval and early Renaissance art, their verticality in parallel with the upward thrust of Gothic architecture and statuary. The way Walker uses paint, meanwhile, lurches between this almost hallucinogenic precision of forms and dreamy clouds of abstract colour. Beneath feet (some surreally disembodied) a dense chequerboard tiled floor recalls the lush patterns of manuscript illumination. Imposed onto this larger scene is a painting within the painting, a rectangle like a mirror, banner or curtain backdrop, in which a miniature woman, her muscular bum and legs exposed, stands on a stage of sharply receding floorboards, staring back into the main picture frame.

Walker comments, “In painting ‘The Garden’ I am thinking of the walled garden in the poem - as both interior and exterior space. The painting depicts a cultivated landscape with shallow stage-like depth, there is a broken column motif and classical costume, both of which I am particularly drawn to as a visual aid when making the work. The parading figures are both dislocated and whole as they move through an imagined landscape in a line. Here we should mention my use of pigments in the work - the vivid green colour is sap green-pigments are derived from the landscape, rocks, minerals, plants - they were used in traditional methods and to make small illuminations for manuscripts like ‘The Romance of the Rose’.”