Plant Leaves

Anne Walker was born in Boston, MA, in 1933. She graduated in 1955 from Smith College and spent her junior year in Paris, working at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Montparnasse. In 1956, she returned to Paris to study with the German artist, Johnny Friedlaender. Her first aquatints and etchings were also done there. Her work is not a realistic portrayal of nature, but tonal compositions transformed by abstracted movements and memories. In Paris, Walker continued to make prints, create etchings, and fine-press books. Since the 1960s the artist has been participating in group, collective and solo exhibitions in France and abroad. In Paris, she has been involved in the Salon de Mai, the Salon de la Jeune Gravure Contemporaine, and the Salon d'Automne, of which she had been a member. In 1986, Walker took up painting, using gouache combined with pastel, a technique that has dominated her work. With these materials, the artist began exploring the format of the artist's book, which has led her to collaborate with poets and writers, including Michel Butor, Kenneth Koch and Peter Davison. Much of this work is concerned with the language of color and exhibits a lyricism that pairs well with literature. Walker illustrated single-copy, or very limited edition books, and created "painted books" over texts by writers such as Bernard Noel, Jean Cortot, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Baudelaire, Walt Whitman, Arthur Rimbaud, and Eugene Guillevic. She had a solo exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum in 2003 which featured handwritten poems by authors such as Emily Dickinson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and others. Walker has participated in both group and solo exhibitions in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, and the United States and her painted books have been acquired by major libraries and museums. In 2001, Walker was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in recognition of her artistic creation and her contribution to French culture and the world.