statement
My vibrant, structural urban landscapes are intertwined with organic elements of smoke, and vegetation. Observed phenomena and painterly playfulness combine to produce a unique vision that is part fact and part fantasy.
Dust clouds created by ant-like workers on vast scaffolds, glitter in the sunlight taking on ghostly figurative appearances.
Victorian curvilinear palm houses provide structural containers for the vegetation-like paintwork, which creeps like ivy across the canvas, propagating textures and marks with a life of their own in the medium.
Shana Nys Dambrot in Art Ltd Magazine August 2012 described my paintings as: "Evocative, wavering, dimensional, architectural, atmospheric, and chromatically paradoxical--more than depiction, these paintings rise to the level of embodiment. Self-consciously in progress, his work, like his subjects, present a metaphor for the way the modern world is changing, that change itself has become the defining quality of our time."
bio
born: 1970, Ireland
education
Royal Academy Schools London, PgDip, 1998
University of Ulster Belfast, BA Hons 1992
selected awards/honors
Culture Ireland Award, Culture Ireland, Dublin 2012
Gold Medal, Royal Ulster Academy, Ulster Museum Belfast, 2009
Major Individual Award, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 2002
Guinness Award for first time exhibitor, The Royal Academy Summer Show London, 1996
selected publications
Simon McWilliams, The New Metropolis, Skotia Gallery, Santa Fe, 2010 - 35 pages
Simon McWilliams: Belfast Paintings, John Martin Chelsea, 2006 - 22 pages
Simon McWilliams: Green Glazes : New Paintings. Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, 2001 - 4 pages
selected solo or two-person exhibits
Simon McWilliams, Skotia Gallery: Shoots and Ladders New Paintings by Simon McWilliams, Los Angeles, CA, 2012
Simon McWilliams, Skotia Gallery: The New Metropolis, Santa Fe, NM, 2010
Simon McWilliams, John Martin Gallery: Belfast Paintings, London, UK, 2006
Simon McWilliams, Art Space Gallery - Michael Richardson Contemporary Art: Green Glazes, London, UK, 2001
selected group shows
Royal Hibernian Academy: 182nd Annual Exhibition, Dublin, Ireland 2012
Skotia Gallery: Veneris XIII, Culver City, CA, 2012
Government Buildings: The Arts Council of Northern Ireland - Contemporary Art in Northern Ireland, Belfast, N.Ireland, 2011
Skotia Gallery: Crow Moon, Santa Fe, NM, 2010
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