The 1980s had seen Ian Breakwell's Diaries reach a much wider public than had hitherto been possible when they were serialised on Channel 4 Television (1984), published as a mass-market paperback by Pluto Press (1986), and then further serialised on BBC Radio 3 in 1990. Although Breakwell continued to keep a notebook with him at all times, in which he jotted down observations and overheard conversations which would eventually be reworked into Diary entries, by the mid-1980s he had ceased to incorporate drawing and photo-collage in his Diary work. During the 90s Breakwell's Diary concentrated on type-written entries, including, from 1995 onwards, the writing of 'memory pieces', lengthy Diary entries based on his time at Derby College of Art - subsequently published in 2001 as Derby Days.

The writings of Franz Kafka, including his posthumously-published Diary, were a key and long-standing influence on Breakwell's work. Then by chance in 1990 he discovered the writings of the Swiss author, Robert Walser, who in turn had been an influence on Kafka. Thus began a long-term fascination with both Walser the man and his writings, and in 1991 Breakwell began a series of pen-and-ink wash drawings — head-and-shoulder portraits — of how he imagined Walser might look. The drawings became a series of 27 which he called Walserings. They were followed in 1992 by a full-length portrait of Walser and several out-of-series pictures based on Walser's texts.

Although not in themselves Diary works, the Walserings have been chosen as a key work of the 1990s in that Breakwell worked on them very much like he had his Diary: sitting hunched at his table with pens, inks and scalpel to hand, working and re-working them every day. Much smaller in scale than the 120 Days series, they nevertheless continue in similar vein: the combination of calligraphic overlays and captions with the image, the interest in the human face presented as a mask, imaginary portraits that somehow transmute into self-portraits. And, as Breakwell himself points out in his accompanying Walserings text:

It was Walser's personification of the flâneur, the wandering, amused voyeur of seemingly insubstantial and inconsequential subject matter transformed by deadpan humour, with which, through my Diary, I felt a particular kinship. The Walking Man, in various guises, had also been a preoccupation in my visual work for over twenty years. Subconsciously I knew that this Walking Man was a disguised mirror image of me.

Felicity Sparrow
2007