“bout the “rtist Fiona Wilson graduated from Glasgow School of Art in , after which she spent thirteen years teaching art, design and animation in universities and colleges across Scotland and the North of England. It was in that, on her return to Glasgow, she spent a summer creating
artwork in the Glasgow Print Studio, and decided she never wanted to swap the studio for the classroom again. After enrolling herself and her mother for the TV programme Brush with Fame, Fiona was encouraged to pursue a career painting full-time by the art critic David Lee she has never looked back, and currently works from WASPS artists studio in Glasgow.
Her current paintings ofer us glimpses into a past portrayed at once with great loyalty and nostalgia, yet infused with a vital originality which is entirely her own. Combining expert draughtsmanship with a powerful eye for emotional subtlety in her models, Fiona is fast becoming one of the country s leading practitioners of nudes, portraits, and burlesque scenes in oil and her work is sought by collectors from around the world.
“n Interview with Fiona Wilson We hope the following provides an insight into the intricacies of the artist s process and the complex and personal inspirations that inform her paintings. The French Impressionist Edgar Degas once conided in a leter that 'Even this heart of mine has something artiicial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.' Viewing her through her art, Fiona Wilson at irst seems to be cut from the same cloth. Her paintings, often taking up Degas subject mater of dancers in motion, seem to instil in you a poignant reverence for the lost glamour of the past, for elaborate costumes, and all-night cabarets.
Right The Ballet Class , Edgar Degas, courtesy of Google Art Project
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The very titles - Swan Song , Memories Faded Like Buterlies on the Wind – themselves sound the muted notes of the time-worn, which ind their echo in Wilson s subdued colourtones to give us the uncanny impression of being confronted with the nearly, albeit reluctantly, forgoten. ‘ight: Me o ies Faded Like Bute lies O The Wi d, oil o e f a e, £
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However, closer engagement reveals a powerful kind of vitality in her work, a facility for catching emotional subtlety in her siters which makes the artist seem entirely of her moment. Where Degas, ever cynical, declared that the dancer has been for me a pretext for painting prety fabrics and for rendering movement , you suspect that, for Fiona, the opposite might be true 窶田apturing a moment of movement, or engaging with ornament and embellishment, might really be a means of conveying people and their personalities.
Right Behind the Veil , oil on canvas, black wooden frame, ﾂ｣
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Not least her own - one aspect of Fiona s work which I ind most consistently intriguing is the strong facial structures which seem to characterise the women in many of her paintings. It might relate, a litle, to the structure of my own face. Sandie [Fiona s friend and mentor “lexandra Gardner, a celebrated painter in her own right] says that in every portrait, there is a bit of yourself as that is the face you know best. I have to concentrate not to draw people's eyes too small or their ears too big! Recently, I ve been atracted to models with beautiful but unusual faces, which present a challenge to me, in that their features are very diferent to mine. I like to think that the ‘ight: Fleei g Fi el , oil o la k oode f a e, ÂŁ
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women I portray all have an inner strength and I guess that is relected both in the way they hold themselves and in the structure of their faces. So there s a fascinating element of collaboration, of give-and-take between the personality of the artist, and that of the siter, which may go some Belo : ‘e elaio , oil o a as, way to accounting for ea oode f a e, ÂŁ the complex contemporaneity of old and new in Fiona s work. She primarily uses oil paint, partly for its durability – for the knowledge that her paintings will be seen for many decades to come, involving her in the long artistic tradition of Degas, of other idols such as John Singer Sargent. Paradoxically, her previous career teaching animation has instilled in her a fascination for modern developments in documenting the instantaneous creation of an artwork - of
charting each stroke and playing it back. I wouldn t think my paintings are set in the past or the present, really. You might say the pin-up girls I paint are stuck in the 0s and 0s, on a sense, but really I think of it more than anything as fairy-tale time. I ve always liked old things, so I tend to surround myself with them. I ve just moved to an old house; I love going to Mr �enn s Costume Shops and inding Victorian oddities to try on my models.
‘ight: The Pea o k s Lai , oil o a as, la k oode f a e, ÂŁ
A o e: The Pill o Hat , oil o
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“nd my models must be actresses – they bring their own thing, but the costumes have to sit right on them in the moment, and I ll ask them to depict sorrow, or other such emotions.
So I wouldn t say it s quite fair to say I paint the past; I paint a past as perceived from now, from a future point. Equally at home with comic self-deprecation and the odd well-placed lyrical lourish, Fiona comes across as unpretentious, self-aware, and entirely commited to her art. In one breath, she laughs about how her sporadic desire to don her old prom dresses in the studio might not prove entirely practical in another, she tells me that the more muted palete which now characterises her work, punctuated by shocks of bright detail, comes from having learnt, through decades of experience, that she must let it sing, rather than make it ight . Let: Goddess i G ee , oil o as, la k oode f a e, ÂŁ
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It s a phrase which perfectly describes both the peculiar charm of her paintings and her entire process, from draughtsmanship and colour to the vital relationship she develops with her models. “Matisse once said something about the importance, in any portrait, of the artist s almost total kinship with the model . I've really struggled with portraits when I didn't get on with the siter, and tightened up, so much that I couldn't ind room for any of my personality in the painting, began to treat it almost as a piece of graphic design. Belo : Stud fo the Muse , oil o la k oode f a e, ÂŁ
�ut on another, much more fruitful occasion, I was chating away with one of my siters, half-consciously really, I was inishing touches that I realise the decision to situate her in a
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background of bright turquoise came at the same time she was telling me about her work as a lifeguard; only then that I made the connection as well with the deep, bright blue of her eyes. I feel this shows that there s a powerful subconscious element to painting. You have to lose yourself, before you can paint yourself – have to shut out all of those worries which nibble at the corner of the mind. Even if that means sometimes yelling at your husband who has, with the best of intentions, interrupted you with a cup of cofee.
‘ight: The S a e o , o ot pe, li ed oode f a e, £
It comes back to this idea of fairy-tale time, of iction. When I was ten, we were asked to paint our ideal day – I showed myself, beside a pool, being served ten cocktails by ten diferent men. Likewise, I used to want to be a lamenco dancer, before I injured my foot, so now I involve myself in that life-whichwasn t through art.
Ultimately, I’m forever painting a life which doesn’t exist.
Belo : Ha e No ‘eg ets ,
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A o e: S a So g , oil o a as, la k oode f a e, £
‘ight: I a P e ious Life , oil o a as, la k oode f a e, £
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