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Simon McWilliams
"He takes his immediate urban surroundings as his subject, through superb draughtsman skills and richly textured layers of paint he produces images that carry the conviction of an observed vision but which are in fact the creation of a parallel and imagined place; emotionally charged abstractions that reveal something his own spiritual relationship with the places that fascinate him." They are also paintings that investigate the meeting of abstract and figurative elements, where colour and surface combine to suggest an elaborate evocation of mood and atmosphere that has led Dr. Brian Kennedy, Keeper of the Ulster Museum to write that McWilliams is a “painter’s painter … His handling of paint is sensuous, tactile almost with a life of it’s own within the medium, in a way that few painters understand nowadays.” Ranging from heavy impasto to the most delicate scumbles and washes his work, first and foremost, is a celebration of painting. McWilliams' work examines the timeless way in which the structural environment of a city intertwines with human presence, a subject that has resulted in seventeen awards for painting in the past eight years. Drawing on Belfast's past, present and future, his paintings manage to combine both realist and abstract visions of a changing world where Palm houses come to occupy the same territory as modern office blocks and radio masts. His works are very much a painter's way of describing one's surroundings; allowing richly textured layers of paint and design to construct, shape and inform every aspect of the picture resulting in a tactile and forthright vision of a time and place. While the primary inspiration is his experience of urban settings, he equally enjoys uniting human elements within these environments, reminding us of our unconscious relationship to the buildings around us. |
