Inez Nathaniel Walker:
Visionary Folk Artist

"Got tired of working so hard on the farm, weeding and hoeing," she told a reporter for New York State's "Correctional Services News" in 1978. "The muck would eat you up."

For awhile Inez worked at a pickle plant, but a strike brought that to an end. In 1949 she moved to Port Byron in New York State and went back to migrant farm work but at least the "muck" of South Carolina was missing. She lived and worked in several other places in New York, including Clyde, Savannah and Geneva.

Inez was imprisoned in the early 1970s for killing a man who had most-likely abused her. "Some of these men folks is pitiful," Inez told the newspaper reporter. It was while confined at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (formerly known as Westfield State Farm) in Westchester County, New York State that she began to draw.

One day in early 1971 Elizabeth Bayley, a teacher of remedial English at the prison for women, found several drawings that had been anonymously left in a pile on a chair in her classroom and discovered they were done by Inez, a student in her class. There were 56 works in all, drawn on the backs of any paper Inez could find such as the prison newsletter, some prison evaluation sheets and forms. Mrs. Bayley was astounded by Inez's visionary talent, "Looking over them, I was struck by their originality, their humor and their amazing attention to detail," the teacher said. She brought her work to the attention of the art teacher who supplied her with drawing paper and sketch books, pens, pencils and crayons. Thus the following 23 works represented on this web site are on plain paper. Mrs. Bayley encouraged her to continue drawing and bought her works through the prison's arts and crafts department.

Inez became prolific and in a few months filled dozens of sketch books prior to her release from prison in 1972. Mrs. Bayley showed the drawings to Pat Parsons a local folk art dealer who purchased many of them for exhibition and Inez had her first show in late 1972. Pat Parsons then supplied Inez with first-rate materials: good paper, watercolors, pencils (both colored and graphite), ink crayons, and felt markers. These are reflected in her later work.

On this website we are featuring Inez Nathaniel's very early works. These drawings, all done at the prison, are from Mrs. Bayley's private collection. You can clearly see the typed information from the correctional facility mimeographed forms showing through from the reverse side.

Inez's drawings are almost exclusively single or paired portraits of females. In most of her works, the heads are drawn much larger and more expressively than the rest of the figures and dominate the composition. The hair is elaborately detailed and the drawings include lots of patterning. The eye lashes are an Inez Walker specialty as are her forward-facing eyes in profile drawings. Though Walker never felt she was able to capture a likeness, and she relied on her imagination to develop the faces, she created clearly recognizable characters. Some recur frequently. Elements of self-portraiture are also evident in her figures, many of whom wear clothing, especially hats, based on the artist's own.

In many of her works, Inez Nathaniel drew the people around her, mainly the inmates whom she referred to as the "Bad Girls." The bad girls are often depicted in social situations engaging in the pleasures of drinking, smoking and conversing. Men and children only occasionally appear in her work.

After her release from prison she remarried in 1975 and took her new husband's name, Walker. Inez lived quietly and simply in a small city in New York's Fingerlakes region, continued to draw and was glad to have the chance to show what she had done to visitors. She died in 1990 in Willard, NY.

Inez Nathaniel-Walker is included in Chuck and Jan Rosenak's "Museum of American Folk Art: Encyclopedia of 20th Century Folk Art and Artists" and "Contemporary American Folk Art: A Collectors's Guide." She is listed in the Gold Edition of "Davenport's Art Reference," Jane Livingston and J. Beardsley's "Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980," "The Artists Bluebook," Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco's "American Self-Taught: Paintings and Drawings by Outsider Artists" and Jay Johnson and William Ketchum's "American Folk Art of the Twentieth Century."

Her work is represented by numerous galleries. Her drawings are in the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, the L'Arcanie, Neuilly-sur-Marne, near Paris as well as in a number of museums in the United States such as the Museum of American Folk Art, the Museum of International Folk Art and the Smithsonian. Since the early 80's Inez has been included in almost every major folk art book and catalog that includes the work of black folk artists.