Chuck Walker: Through a Glass Darkly

Chicago-based artist, writer, and critic Margaret Hawkins curated this mid-career retrospective of long-time Chicago artist Chuck Walker. The exhibition featured Walker’s handsome, large-scale figure paintings, interspersed with smaller drawings and still life sketches. Over the past decade, Walker’s work has been largely absent from public visibility. This retrospective aimed not only to re-introduce Walker’s compelling work to new audiences but also to display his newer works to long-time admirers. While many of the figures are portraits depicted in recognizable, everyday settings, such as bedrooms, kitchens, and sidewalks, his sensitive portrayal adds significant complexity to the figures, creating often dark, mysterious, and enigmatic depictions. As curator Margaret Hawkins observes, Walker’s paintings mine our collective unconscious, dredging up dreamlike scenes that “show us our own dreaded fantasies and alter egos so that we may begin to understand them.”