Stephen Walter

Artist Statement

These drawings have evolved through a fascination with maps, public and sub-cultural signs, symbols and obsessive tendencies. Here, the maps have developed their own identities, finding a parallel between the history of map making, its source materials and the culture that produced them.

About this Work

Walter creates landscapes where objects are slowly taken over by their symbolic representations. Leaving us with forests of geographical map symbols and places where every inch is mapped and quantified for human purpose. The ‘awe’, so revered by Walter, is presented by the sheer volume of symbols, paired down and separated from their real state. Tackling the notions of our increasing distance from the Land and the outlook of a deeply troubling long-term future, Walter decides to use mundane elements of contemporary and municipal culture to hark back to a sublime space. Here, technology and information provides a new wilderness, unavoidable within the realms of a contemporary sublime. The tight drawing process mimics the growing environmental concerns for the need to ‘cut back’.

Stephen Walter’s Website