RGI

 

Helen F Wilson RSW RGI

 

Born:

1954

 

Date of RGI Election:

1984

 

Awards include:

W O Hutcheson Prize for drawing, Cargill Travelling Scholarship 1st prize, Scottish Drawing Competition (twice).

 

Studied at Glasgow School of Art 1971-76 (including post-grad year). Currently living and working in Glasgow (Wasps Studios). Work in various private and public collections including: Glasgow Art Gallery, Kelvingrove, Paisley Museum & Art Gallery, Scottish Arts Council, Royal College of Ophthalmologists, Royal College of Physicians.

 

HELEN WILSON RSW RGI PAI is not only the winner of this year’s top prize – the David Cargill Award – but also of the Strathearn Gallery, Crieff (small painting) Award.

 

Her ‘Rehearsal’ was painted earlier this year after spending some 18 months with Scottish Ballet - backstage, in wardrobe, at rehearsals and performances. A not unexpected engagement for a mother who had already ‘grown her own’ ballet dancer – daughter, Jenny, is training in London. Growing with and into her daughter’s world of ballet “entitled” her, she feels, to paint ballet dancers; and “perhaps there’s a common gene – line is almost more important to the dancer than the artist; it’s about a sense of ‘balance’….. more than just the physical.”

 

It’s “a charming study, with lovely textured brushwork and an interesting perspective, as if tilting the floor with the figure…” notes Sally Kerr in The Herald.

 

Her small painting ‘On Reflection’ is a portrait of her daughter - “Simple and yet beautifully conceived…..” (The Herald) - and more typical of her current preference for the small painting. And “it was the quality of her painting above all that especially appealed” to Fiona Maguire of the Strathearn Gallery.

 

No stranger to awards – beginning with three silvers in the Glasgow Art Galleries schools’ competition – Helen wanted to paint for as long as she can remember. Her great influence was another RGI – Charlie MacQueen, in the Art Department at her school in her Paisley home town. Teachers, she fervently believes, are pivotal to your development in your teenage years.

 

David Hockney and Chagall were strong influences during her time at the Glasgow School of Art, she has always liked Degas – and not just for his dancers – and she admires Sickert, Giotto and the Italian Masters. While at Glasgow School of School she won the David Cargill Travelling Scholarship which took her to Italy briefly – and to Colonsay for a winter. It also established a lifelong connection with the Hebridean island.

 

In spite of taking her paints with her on her regular visits to Colonsay, she has never been quite so comfortable with landscape painting. Nor can she “get excited about still life”. People have enduring appeal as her subjects. Her work has changed over the decades, from more narrative pictures to portraiture in the broadest sense. Drawing is always important to her – “terribly unfashionable!” - and she feels she is now bringing narrative and portrait together.

 

Winning a prize commission to paint David Suchet in the Garrick Milne competition in 2004 was a particular highlight which she much enjoyed.

 

Apart from the time spent helping out at a nursery school where she worked over many years while her daughter was growing up, most of her time is spent in her studio in King Street in Glasgow. Although a very private, self-contained lady, she doesn’t want to shun contact with daily life outside her own home studio!

 

In March this year she exhibited at the Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow (www.billcliffegallery.com); her next will be in January in Thomson’s Gallery in Marylebone High Street in London. (www.thompsonsgallery.co.uk).

 

Karin Spalter Nov 05