Walton Ford

Born 1960 Larchmont (NY), United States.
Lives and works in Great Barrington (MA), United States

«Walton Ford's works are technically brilliant and visually spectacular. His detailed, life-size depictions of animals in watercolour and gouache are fascinatingly reminiscent of natural history drawings from past centuries. Indeed Ford himself has named the ornithologist John J. Audubon, creator of the legendary Birds of America series (1827-38) as one of his inspirations. Ford's interest in this visual language is not motivated by simple admiration, however; his aim is to subvert its humanizing approach to animals by creating complex allegories imbued with absurd humour à la John Tenniel. His images are full of surprises and fractures; the depicted scenes often appear brutal or comical - and thus utterly disconcerting. In Falling Bough (2002), a large flock of pigeons perch on a branch that hangs in the air somewhere between freefall and surreal suspension. In its detail, the ostensibly naturalistic rendering of the feathered colony is as chaotic as a Brueghelian apocalypse. Ford draws attention to his often very specific and allegorical narrative threads in handwritten commentaries - Dürer plays a role in Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros (2008), for example, and Hemingway is involved in Lost Trophy (2005). A series of paintings that includes Jack on his Death-bed (2005) from a cartoon homage to Richard Burton, a spectacular 19th-century adventurer and naturalist who shared his home with forty apes and even compiled a Simian dictionary. Here, the animals represent the colonial master: as civilized apes, they look down upon the viewer with an air of superiority or even contempt. In this comedy of exchanged roles, Ford's actors are protagonists of an unnatural nature, and the satirical alienation is always aimed at human characteristics.» Jens Asthoff