Pinocchio

Jason Walker’s imagery reflects popular culture: from Disney’s Mary Poppins to frosted doughnuts. As an observer and conveyor of cultural icons, he is an anthropologist, and his beautiful and often endearing paintings resonate with art viewers. But this Toronto based artist is also an analyst. Conceived with the clear-eyed vision of a native of Nairn, Scotland, Walker’s compositions challenge viewers to consider contemporary culture. Through his iconography, Walker creates artifacts, a paint-on-canvas time capsule for future generations. Walker’s art remains within post-modernism and, although representational, is also conceptual. Through live-action figures and figurines, Walker also conveys the universality of emotions: the romantic, the tragic, and the comic. Yet his humor is playful and often subtle. Frosted doughnuts evoke the realism of the 17th-century Belgian nature morte or still-life tradition. A special-effects animator for the Oscar-nominated Madame Tutli-Putli, Walker employs humor to bring social concepts to life.