Publication May 2024
A Retrospective Exhibition at Aberglasney Gardens, 2024
Richard Davies
Introduction by Tessa Jackson
Selecting work by an artist one has grown to know over more than two decades is both a delight and an intellectual challenge.
Digital exhibition catalogue »
Publication October 2014, £35.00
Author David Fraser Jenkins
Biographical Essay by David Moore
Introduction by Geraint Talfan Davies
160 pages, hardback.
The work of William Wilkins is unique, both at the level of skill it displays and the length of time it occupies. Born of months, even years, of painstaking creation each picture exudes both artistry and joy; a celebration of perception which merits exposure to a wide audience. Focusing upon his remarkable pointillist technique this book represents the long and celebrated career of the artist together with the slow maturation of his style.
'The paintings of William Wilkins
are some of the most beautiful
things that I have seen that have
been made in my lifetime.'
David Fraser Jenkins
Country Life, November 19, 2014:
'It's rare that an artist espouses a style of painting very specifically associated with a period of the past, in this case, pointillism, which had its heyday at the end of the 19th century with Seurat, Signac and Pissarro. Yet William Wilkins has spent long years studying this analytical approach to light and colour and makes calm reflective paintings of figures in interiors, still-lifes and landscapes that look remarkably modern, rather than a hundred years out of date.
He draws with the trellis-like cross-hatching of Morandi and has developed a fastidiously dappled painting style that achieves remarkable results, particularly of Venice.
Mr Wilkins is also a cultural impresario whose other great interest is public gardens: he founded the National Botanic Garden of Wales and the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust and has been closely involved in the restoration of Aberglasney and with setting up a biennial visual arts prize, Artes Mundi. But he is first and foremost, a painter, as this fascinating book demonstrates...' Andrew Lambirth
Western Mail, November 4, 2014:
'While most artists face the pressures of completing a new body of work for their exhibitions, William Wilkins is taking an altogether different approach. For some of the pieces going on display as part of his major new show remain unfinished. The artist is renowned not only for his painstaking pointillism technique but also for working 'in-situ' which means many of his landscapes and studies of light can take several years to complete....' Karen Price
Read more: www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news
Purchase the book
Available from all good bookshops, or online:
www.graffeg.com
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'There is something very original in his work - a purity of tone that sets his paintings apart from anything else that they may seem at first glance to resemble. His eye is utterly flawless in its analysis of the light that forms his principal subject matter, and his hand is unfaltering in rendering it. The result is a series of small pictures that add up to a triumph of the painter's art.' Hilton Kramer, The New York Times