Master engraver George A. Walker presents The Life and Times of Conrad Black, a wordless biography of the Canadian-born media mogul. With 100 stunning woodcuts, Walker affords readers a glimpse of Black as a child, as a successful businessman, as a British peer, and as a convicted felon.

George A. Walker is an award-winning wood engraver, book artist and author whose courses in book arts and printmaking at OCAD University in Toronto, where he is Associate Professor, have been offered continuously since 1985. His artworks are held in collections ranging from the Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), New York City and he has had over 15 solo exhibitions as well as been included in more than 100 group shows. Among many book projects-both trade and limited edition-Walker has illustrated 2 hand-printed books by internationally acclaimed author Neil Gaiman. Walker also illustrated the first Canadian edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, both published by the Cheshire Cat Press. The Cheshire Cat Press is a partnership between Andy Malcolm and George Walker which continues to publish limited edition books featuring the writing of Lewis Carroll.

George Walker was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art in 2002 for his contribution to the cultural area of Book Arts. He is also a member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto where he was featured in a solo exhibition of his books and printmaking in the spring of 2019. Walker's latest book-length project presents the iconic life of Hollywood silent-film star Mary Pickford in a suite of 87 wood engravings.

George A. Walker's profile page

• Short-listed, ForeWord IndieFab Book of the Year Award

[The Life and Times of Conrad Black] in so many ways is a superlative expression of Black's flawed and complicated humanity

Whatever Gods There Be

George A. Walker's The Life and Times of Conrad Black: A Wordless Biography is a curious specimen of a book. It is comprised entirely of woodcut images, without text of any kind, and it provokes a very different response than biography normally does. Most biographies provide information to satisfy our curiosity in a particular life, but Walker presents us with images that offer little concrete information about the life of Conrad Black. Instead we have to rely on our own memories of the events he depicts, or we have to investigate the images that we do not recognize at all. In this way the book's biographical information is primarily what we bring to it, what we are able to remember or are willing to discover. The images direct us outward, encouraging us to reconsider the subject of Black's life on our own.

By eschewing words, Walker's woodcuts are allowed to stand as simple and powerful gestures to a life story that any amount of words would be unable to tell in any case. His interpretation of Black's infamous middle finger is wonderful, as is the effect produced by a seemingly stray halo in a depiction of Black defending himself to the world. These images are, as Tom Smart's closing essay suggests, a kind of text in themselves, and they tell a story that is truly compelling, even and especially if it is a story that requires us to contribute more than usual to its telling.

Jeremy Luke Hill

'Woodcut engraving is a demanding form, one that reduces images to a rudimentary boldness where everything depends on the contrast between black and white. Yet in Walker's sure hands, these bluntly hewn images convey the full mystery of Conrad Black: his intelligence and his foolishness, his love of the glamorous spotlight and his reserve, his crudeness and his decorum. Whatever else you want to say about Conrad Black, he's a complicated character. In this suite of drawings, Walker has done justice to Black's complexity. Without using a word, Walker's images give voice to the inner Black.'

The Globe and Mail