John Walker (b. 1939)

Walker's interest in levitating shapes prompts him to lift the Alba into the middle ground and thrust her to one side...The total impression of these early Alba paintings is of artificial world of the theatre, with its forms appropriately heightened. Rembrandt's vision of a teatrum mundi probably enlightened Walker.

(Exhibition catalogue, John Walker, Paintings from the Alba and Oceanic Series 1979-84, Hayward Gallery, London, 1985, p. 9)