Art - Artizan Editions

Halfway through my conversation with the ‘painter-printmaker’ Richard Walker, I realise we share a love for Battersea Power Station, the doomed 1939 building just south of Victoria Station which has been lying fallow since 1983. The theme of the building recurs in his work, which you can see in the HQ Gallery’s latest exhibition this week. “I love 20th century buildings,” he says, and reveals that he is a member of the 20th Century Society, that he takes people on trips to such buildings, and that he would have become an architect if it hadn’t seemed to be a job that involved so many ‘calculations’. So instead he became an artist, and became skilled at representing three-dimensionality on a flat surface. “I love representing the atmosphere that is created by a building, or by a group of buildings, or by a cityscape,” he says.

Richard studied printmaking and graphic art at college, but ‘drifted’ into painting. “But I never stopped thinking like a printmaker,” he says, “in terms of colours, blocks and layers.” And he still produces a number of prints, mostly at the Artizan Editions studio in Brighton, which specialises in helping artists with the process. “Painting in your own studio is such a solitary process,” he says, “so I enjoy the fact that printmaking is all about team-work. I love being able to pop out to the shops, and find when I return that the work has changed.” The exhibition will feature prints from a number of artists who use Artizan, including internationally renowned names like Brian Rice and Bridget Riley. AL