Inez Nathaniel Walker Biography

This entry was taken directly from the “Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American FOLK ART and ARTISTS,” by Chuck and Jan Rosenak. (Abbeville Press, NYC, 1990).

Inez Nathaniel Walker—“I just draw by my own mission, you know. I just sit down and start to drawing.”

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

Born Inez Stedman, 1911, Sumter, South Carolina. Received little formal education. Married (first name unknown) Nathaniel, 1924; married (first name unknown) Walker around 1972; separated. Three sons, one daughter. Died May 23, 1990, Willard, New York.

GENERAL BACKGROUND

Inez Nathaniel Walker began to draw her expressive, imaginatively colored portraits—usually of women—while she was in prison.

Firm facts about Walker’s life are rare. It is believed that she was born in South Carolina, that her father died when she was twelve or thirteen years old, and that she was married to Nathaniel when she was around sixteen, but no confirmation of these dates or events is available.

Walker is quoted as saying that she moved north around 1930 to escape the “muck” of farm work. She worked for a time in a pickle factory in Philadelphia and around 1949 moved to Port Byron, New York, where she worked on apple farms.

In 1970 Walker was convicted of the “criminally negligent homicide” of a man who she felt had mistreated her. She explained her action with the statement: “Some of these men folks is pitiful.” Walker was incarcerated in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Bedford, New York, from 1971 through 1972 for her crime.

After she was released from prison, Walker returned to the Port Byron area and farm work; there she married for the second time.

ARTISTIC BACKGROUND

Inez Walker started drawing in 1972 while she was in prison. Elizabeth Bayley, who taught remedial English at the Bedford Hills facility, showed some of her drawings to Pat Parsons, an art dealer. Parsons bought most of the drawings and befriended the artist; she is the last person Walker is known to have contacted before she disappeared. Parsons received a phone call from her on Thanksgiving Day in 1980, and no one heard from her again.

SUBJECTS AND SOURCES

Walker said that she drew to protect herself from “all those bad girls,” but it is not clear if she was referring to the inmates or other women she knew (nor is it clear whether the women in her drawings are supposed to be inmates or others). For the most part, Walker drew women in single or double portraits, sometimes full-length but mostly head-and-shoulder views. The women are shown looing straight ahead or in profile, sometimes talking, drinking, or smoking. Their eyes always face front, regardless of the position of their heads. Walker concentrated on her subjects’ hairstyles; the bodies are usually oreshortened and, when shown full length, have tiny feet, disproportionate to their body size.

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES

Walkers first efforts were on the back of the mimeographed pages of the prison newspaper. Later Pat Parsons supplied her with first-rate materials—good paper, watercolors, pencils (both colored and graphite), ink, crayons, and felt markers.

Walker did not concern herself with realistic color schemes; her faces and other visible areas of skin may be shown as solid red or blue, with details set off in black. The backgrounds contain boldly geometric and linear designs, and similar designs are often repeated on the subjects’ clothing.

At some point after her remarriage, Walker stopped using “Nathaniel” on her drawings and began to sign them simply “Inez Walker.”

Most of Walker’s drawings are about 17 by 11 inches in size. Some are larger, and approximately twenty of them measure 42 by 30 inches. Walker is known to have completed three or four hundred drawings in total.

ARTISTIC RECOGNITION

Inez Nathaniel Walker’s drawings are beautiful and timeless, and they deserve an important position in the history of clack folk art. Her work has been shown in exhiitions in New York, Ohio, Pennsylbania, and elsewhere and is included in the collection of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City.