[ISEA96] Artist Statement: James Faure Walker – Leicester Square Pictures

Artist Statement

“Leicester Square is the cinema centre of London. Tourists come in their thousands every day. Families argue about Pizza Hut or Burger King. People walk to work, mill about, carry bags, check maps and watches, and complain about the shoes they’ve just bought. Using an electronic camera every day for several weeks I collected my data. I toyed around with these images for a while, before finding these patterns, sometimes using arbitrary backgrounds (dishwasher interior, sex shop), sometimes getting more filmic. As someone who mixes the digital in with the painterly – my paintings are much larger and now use a stencil technique to bring in the Mac processed stuff – I’ve been anxious about keeping in contact with the very ordinary world we actually live in. I suppose I’m an abstract painter in some ways, but don’t like being that way. So instead of wafting to fantasy land (the destination for many of these distracted pedestrians, maybe going to the interactive rock museum) I use software to keep my eye on what’s around me…its mysterious beauty.”

  • James Faure Walker, UK