​J Michael Walker

​J Michael Walker is an LA-based multi-disciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, photography, and digital media. His work, largely through portraiture, illuminates the spiritual essence of marginalized people and women, particularly Black and Latina women he has met and engaged with.

​

J Michael was born in the South under segregation, and raised during the Civil Rights Era: equality and inclusion have been on his mind for a very long time, guiding his life and art. In 1974, an out-of-the-blue invitation to go illustrate the first textbook in the indigenous language of the Tarahumara Indians of northern Mexico grounded him in the language, cultures and spirituality of the people and the land, providing the foundation for much of the work he has created ever since.

​

His art presents us with women (and, occasionally, men), whose permission and trust he’s been gifted, and with deep awareness of the artist’s responsibility to represent one’s subjects honorably, deeply, and true. For Walker, creating beautiful, dignified, connecting images of people who ofttimes go unheralded through this world has real value and meaning.

​

J Michael Walker is recipient of fellowships from Instituto Sacatar and Art Matters, as well as the 2006 COLA Fellowship; eight grants from Los Angeles Cultural Affairs, and from the California Council for the Humanities; three artist residencies from the California Arts Council; and has had numerous solo shows at, among others, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Mexican Cultural Institute, Harvard University’s Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares of Mexico City; and participated in over 120 group exhibitions in the US, Mexico, and South Korea.