Tag: British art

Designer Desire: Claudia Williams

Montage of Claudia Williams artworks | H is for Home

Claudia Williams (b. 1933) is a Welsh fine artist best known for her observational works, often of groups of people and children at the beach and domestic settings. At the age of 16, she attended the Chelsea School of Art.

She once revealed:

I do find people fascinating and I never get tired of painting people in different attitudes and working with different colour schemes.

Her late husband, Gwilym Prichard, credits her with his initiation into painting; he took it up as a ruse to get her attention. The couple and their 4 children have lived and travelled in Wales, England, France and Greece with the pair documenting their existence  through their artworks.

In 2000, Williams and Prichard returned to live in Tenby, south west Wales where she continues to paint in her home studio and exhibit nationwide. There’s a book of her work, Claudia Williams: An Intimate Acquaintance, available on Amazon.

Claudia Williams with her paintings, Tenby, 29 March 2008
Claudia Williams with her paintings, Tenby, 29 March 2008

credit

Additional image credits:

ArtUK | Ask Art | Mutual Art

Designer Desire: William Scott

Montage of artworks by William Scott | H is for Home

Since relocating to rural Wales, we feel as though many of the paintings we have by Northern Industrial artists just don’t suit the interior or new locale. I was doing some research online for artists whose work I felt would be more in keeping, when I discovered William Scott (1913-1989).

I love Scott’s style, composition (the repeated use of still life objects such as pears, fish and pots & pans) and palette. His pared back approach really works in simple, rustic, minimalist surroundings.

Scott was born in Greenock, Scotland and moved with his family, at the age of 11, to his father’s home-town of Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. He attended Belfast College of Art where he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools.

This is what he says of his work:

I am an abstract artist in the sense that I abstract. I cannot be called non-figurative while I am still interested in the modern magic of space, primitive sex forms, the sensual and the erotic, disconcerting contours, the things of life.

Some of his later pieces really remind me of the work of Mark Rothko (see the two portrait shaped ones above). Coincidentally, here’s William Scott with the latter (Rothko stayed with the Scott family in England in 1959) in a short film produced by the Tate to accompany their Scott centenary exhibition in 2013.

As well as the Tate, his work is in the collections of the Ulster Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum, National Galleries of Scotland, The British Council Collection and Kettle’s Yard.

I’m not surprised that Kettle’s Yard has examples of his work; it’s very reminiscent (to me, anyway) of that of Ben Nicholson – another artist in the Kettle’s Yard collection.

His work often comes up for sale; from original oils for hundreds of thousands of pounds to limited-edition prints available for the tens of thousands. We may have to settle for a collection of postcards from a museum shop!

Image credits:

Artnet | ArtUK | Bonhams

Designer Desire: William Turner

Montage of William Turner artworks

William Turner (1920-2013), or William Ralph Turner to differentiate him from his more eminent namesake, is considered the last of the great Northern Industrial artists.

Famously, Turner was the only person to have painted L S Lowry’s portrait from life.

We have had a fair few of Will Turner’s paintings pass through our hands; all of them are pictured above. We bought them from Dave Gunning, the art dealer with a gallery in Todmorden who is credited with ‘rediscovering’ Will.

In 2005, there was a long overdue retrospective of his work that took place at Gallery Oldham for which an accompanying book was published – William Turner, An English Expressionist. Another monograph by Stuart Archer & Bill Clark was published in 2010.

Here’s a rare interview with the artist done by Granada’s North West Tonight news programme.

Designer Desire: Kyffin Williams

Montage of Kyffin Williams artworks

We’re just back from a few days away in sunny Wales, so it’s timely that we’re featuring a famous Welsh artist in this week’s Designer Desire series, Sir Kyffin Williams.

Williams (1918 – 2006) was a landscape and portrait painter who lived in Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (otherwise famously known as Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch) on the Welsh island of Anglesey. He failed an army medical on the grounds of epilepsy and was advised by a doctor, “As you are, in fact, abnormal, I think it would be a good idea if you took up art”.

He attended Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1941. His subject matter often consisted of Welsh mountains and cottages with farmers, shepherds and sheepdogs taking centre stage.

Oil painting self-portrait by Kyffin Williams

I don’t think we’ll be able to afford one a Kyffin Williams original oil painting in this lifetime or the next; however, limited-edition prints and multiples can be had at auction and online.

Here’s a 6-minute film which shares photographs of the man and further examples of his work.

Additional image credits:

Art Wales