John R Walker William Wright

William Wright is the director of the Sherman Galleries, a former deputy director of the Art Gallery of NSW and an artist. John Walker has known him for 20 years but never painted him before.

Walker is a figurative painter concerned primarily with suburbia. In recent years, however, he has begun painting portraits of friends. It was over a few glasses of wine with Wright one afternoon that Walker decided he’d like to paint him because he has such an interesting head. ‘I wasn’t specially thinking of the Archibald,’ he says.

‘The great thing about someone like Bill is that they aren’t in the least bit narcissistic,’ says Walker. ‘I can’t paint anyone who is because then you try to make them look the way they think they should look.’ Walker painted Wright’s portrait in two sittings. He did the head in the first session and, whilst he was pleased with it, he admits he wondered what his subject would think. Wright thought it was great and the rest of the portrait followed quickly.

Born in Sydney in 1957, Walker did an art diploma at the Alexander Mackie College. He has been hung in the Sulman Prize twice.