At first glance, Bill Wilkinson’s paintings might look like simple exercises in geometry. Don’t be fooled. Take a walk around the Sunshine Coast Art Centre’s Doris Crowston Gallery, and soon the depth and complex artistry of Wilkinson’s work can draw you in. If geometry class had been as interesting as this, I might have passed math.
The Sechelt artist’s solo show is called Evolution of a Series, and while it has not been hung in a chronological timeline, you do see some of Wilkinson’s earlier work and progress with these materials, which consist of jig-sawed, one-quarter-inch-thick MDF board and acrylic paints in black, white and just a few other painstakingly chosen shades.
“I spend a lot of time working on colours, playing with them on the computer until I’m close,” Wilkinson said in an interview at the exhibition’s July 7 opening reception. “Then I mix my paints and do more adjustments. There can be many variations. If it’s not right while I’m painting it, I’ll shift it again.”
Wilkinson says his process, initially, is random. “It’s just in the sketch realm, where I’m moving lines around until it starts to make sense to me, until it looks right, feels right. Then when I put it in the computer, I adjust it more and more.” He then cuts his wood canvas and carefully lays out painter’s tape to help create his razor-sharp black lines before applying his other colours.
Wilkinson’s background in architecture and technical illustration comes through in many of the 17 pieces in the show, especially in the few pieces of his latest work, which are more straightforwardly architectural. “This is my way of using those same skills and creating abstract art instead, which is just so liberating and fascinating,” he said.
Most of the paintings explore his variously assembled collections of diagonal lines and boxes. But the different elements can interact in a way that makes the eyes dance, as in the white, green and blue work called Infinity. In other pieces, like Landscape, the artist playfully delivers a lively sense of jutting three-dimensionality in a flat painting.
“I always try to get some movement,” Wilkinson said. “Things are falling or shifting or wobbling.”
The show Evolution of a Series is on display at the Sechelt gallery through Aug. 4.
