“For many years I have created images of places and objects in response to my immediate surroundings. The resulting drawings, paintings and prints that I have made relate to very particular sites which are highly specific and personal, yet hopefully universal. Some recurring motifs have been ditches, open fields, roads, paths, boundaries and puddles. I have been constantly involved in trying to capture the essence of a place and describing how one can retrace one’s footsteps, look again and take time to think, often working ‘in series’ to accentuate this notion of looking again and returning.

More recently I have been involved with many residency programmes in Ireland, the UK, Europe and the U.S. and have continued to investigate and remain aware of my environment. I make many drawings which come together alongside other work and are very important to me as part of the daily studio pattern. Some drawings are not preparatory work for paintings in the future but more for themselves. They’re drawings in their own right, completed over weeks from written notes, little studies and scribbles, some photographs, memory and chance. They begin in the studio from a mix of information which helps me to establish an outline of what the drawing itself or a future painting might become.”

Keith Wilson was born in Belfast in 1971 and studied at the University of Ulster and at Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland, gaining an Honours Degree in Visual Communication and a further Postgraduate Diploma in Illustration. A Member of the Royal Ulster Academy and a Fellow of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, and Royal Academy exhibitor, Keith has won many awards internationally, and his paintings and drawings are held in many public and private collections worldwide.