
Artist: Nick Walker
Title: Vandal vs Louboutin (Part 2)
Medium: Giclee Print
Size: 49.9 x 69.3 cm
Edition: 30
Price: £400
*email info@theartofnickwalker.com to enter lottery
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Nick Walker is a British street artist born in Bristol in 1969 who helped pioneer the stencil graffiti movement that would later define Banksy. Emerging from the city’s early 1980s scene alongside members of the Wild Bunch music collective, Walker began combining freehand spray technique with intricate hand-cut stencils, producing images that feel spontaneous yet photographically precise.
His signature character is “The Vandal,” a bowler-hatted gentleman who splashes vivid paint across grey walls, a witty self-portrait that questions the divide between order and rebellion. Works such as Moona Lisa, a stencil of the Mona Lisa baring her bottom, and the large mural Painting the City Red on Nelson Street, Bristol, have become landmarks in urban art tours.
Walker’s influence on Banksy is widely acknowledged: both artists refined stencil craft in the same Bristol circles, shared walls during the 1990s and exhibited through Pictures on Walls, the influential London print house that launched many street artists into the gallery market. In 2008 Walker’s solo show at Black Rat Gallery sold £750,000 of art in a single night, proving the commercial power of street aesthetics on canvas.
International residencies followed, including a 2013 stint at the Quin Hotel in New York where he filled the lobby with red paint drips and bowler-hatted silhouettes, extending his visual language into luxury spaces. Whether on brick, aluminium or restaurant wall, Walker continues to celebrate the city as “the ultimate canvas,” reminding viewers that a sharply cut stencil and a dash of humour can still stop traffic and start conversations.