Nick Walker
The Bristol stencil artist behind the Vandal, the bowler-hatted man with a paint tin.
Nick Walker was born in Bristol in 1969 and was part of the city's graffiti scene from the early 1980s, a decade before the generation that made it famous. He worked on the film sets of Judge Dredd and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and developed a stencil practice that is technically precise and often multi-layered. The recurring figure is the Vandal: a man in a bowler hat and pinstripe suit, caught in the act of throwing paint, defacing something respectable with an air of complete composure. Moona Lisa and the Morning After skyline pieces are the images most asked for.
The market is largely in editioned screenprints and in hand-finished works, and the distinction between them is the thing to pin down: many editions were issued in a standard version and in smaller hand-finished or hand-sprayed variants, with different edition sizes and different value, and the difference is visible but easy to overstate or understate in a photograph. Unique works on canvas and on found objects also appear. Pencil signature, numbering and the publisher's or artist's certificate are the reference, and Bristol provenance is common and traceable.
If you own a work by Nick Walker
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.