John Williamson

After graduating in Visual Communication at Birmingham Art College I took a position as a graphic designer at the BBC. This was less challenging than I had hoped, so I followed this by spending the next forty years teaching Art in Merseyside and Sefton. I consider it a real privilege to have worked with some amazing art teachers and wonderfully talented students.

Along the way I gained a M.Des at Liverpool University School of Architecture and began to take my own work a little more seriously.

Most of my subject sources are maritime or industrial and mainly drawn from activities around the coast of northern England. I have a particular interest in the places where people work, or where they have built structures. Harbours, docks, jetties, piers, industry, boats and ships are visual magnets for me.

My work is always based in realism, sometimes quite loosely, as I want others to see what I am seeing. I am all too aware of how transient many of my subjects are and most should have long disappeared under the wheels of progress. Sadly, some have passed even while I was finishing my paintings of them. There is always a sadness associated with my work because I realise that I am capturing fleeting glimpses of scenes from a time that soon will be no longer.

Read more about John Williamson’s work here