Artist
Reception: Thursday,
June 5
th
2014
San
Francisco, CA
–
California artist Nicholas Wilton’s atmospheric, richly layered paintings
function like visual poems, hinting at underlying dialogues and striking a delicate balance
between sp
ontaneous action and careful gesture. Rendered in a unique, intuitive
color palette
ranging from bold blues and blacks to soft pastels, his paintings manage to seem at once
ephemeral and structured, loosely woven and tightly conceived. Their graphic and rh
ythmic
compositions seize
our attention, while their subtle patterns
and details
—
innovative textures,
paint drips, embedded symbols
—
invite quiet examination. Looking at them, we have the sense
that we’re reading a private visual language,
the result of yea
rs of development and introspection
on the artist’s part.
Like the expressionist painter Kandinsky, who believed deeply in the spiritual power and content
of art, Wilton charges his canvases with the energy and rhythm of thought. Elements of the real
worl
d often figure into his paintings
—
letters of the alphabet, a word,
an object such as a cup or
flower
—
but the overall images remain abstract, hovering at the edge of interpretation. “It’s the
accuracy of feeling I am interested in rather than
the accuracy o
f a specific representation,”
Wilton has said. Each painting is a mediation between his creative mind and the viewer’s,
designed to be “reinterpreted, incorporated into the experiences and personal stories of others.”
Born in San Francisco, Wilton was educ
ated at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and
studied as a teenager
with contemporary glass artist Ludwig Schaffrath
—
a design influence that
can still be felt in the fluid yet ordered nature of his artwork. His paintings have been included in
gal
lery exhibitions around the U.S., placed in numerous collections, and featured on book covers,
a U.S. postage stamp, and elsewhere in the public sphere. He lives and works in Northern
California.