Gerry Wilmer MA Fine Art/Painting
Sketching ‘Under Brighton Pier’
I love sketching outdoors using a water soluble ink pen and watercolour in a small book. I draw across the binding and on both sides of the paper so the drawings cannot be taken out of the books. The sketchbooks stayed private until a few years ago when my dad begged me to do something with them. He liked my sketchbooks better than all my other work. Dad was born and brought up in Brighton. When I was a child he taught me and my siblings to swim in the sea, took us for long walks along cliffs, through woods and fields. I have a deep love of the countryside and sea rooted in those childhood memories. Dad died a few years ago but I think he would be pleased that I have found a way to share my sketchbook drawings in the form of archival giclee prints.
Sketchbook drawing, pen and watercolour, ‘Under Brighton Pier’.
Indoors I work on large scale paper, using acrylic paints, often basing the work on a sketch I have done, or a memory of something I have seen or felt.
‘Walk in the Woods’ Acrylic on paper painting in progress.
‘Walk in the Woods’ in progress.
I then go on to paint in oils on canvases that I have stretched myself, as I find the stretching and priming a special part of the process of making a painting.
The oil painting is usually a slower process, often reworking over and over, but sometimes I take a small canvas outdoors and paint in oils or acrylics directly from the subject. I call these oil sketches, and as sketches I feel I can be more forgiving and try and leave them as they are, without painting over them!
Small oil on canvas, ‘Walk in the Woods’ painted outdoors.
This is a new version of my Bluebell Wood painting. Oil on canvas, completed in May 2018. It has a slightly surreal feeling with the strange trees in the distance where the light shines in. I was going to make them more realistic, then decided to leave it as it is, with a bit of mystery!
Painting outdoors in the apple orchard. Oil on canvas.
I went back to University a few years ago to study for my MA in Fine Art. Having lovely studio space meant I could work on a big painting project!
Making my canvas stretchers in the studio doing my MA. On the wall behind the canvas stretchers is an acrylic painting on paper, based on running around the bluebell wood, with a glimpse of the yellow rape seed field in the distance. I felt like I inhaled the woods, held my breath and rushed to the studio to exhale onto the paper!
MA Work in progress. Oil on canvas. Based on the bluebell woods. Two canvases together which would eventually be connected to five other canvases to form the piece ‘There Is More’.
Small visitor to my ‘ There is More’ installation, at my MA exhibition.
‘There is More’ Acrylic and oil on seven canvases, joined together to form a space you can enter, as if you were in the painting. Hundreds of loose pieces of painted canvas cover the floor, to give the effect of colours drifting down from the canvases, like leaves in autumn, or petals in spring. The feeling of a woodland scene.
You can see some of my sketches and paintings reproduced as greetings cards and limited edition archival giclee prints, on my Etsy shop;-
http://www.etsy.com/shop/gerrywilmersartworks
gerrywilmersketchblog 
Thanks for the Christmas card Gerry – Great to hear from you! – Great sketches – loved them all!! Are you on Facebook? Do you have an email account? Mine is: richard_benns@btinternet.com – Ive sent this link to Hannah Eva’s coming up three in January – she’s as bright as a button and loves drawing and painting! They are living near Salisbury – if you can email me I’ll give you her address – will take your card to her when we visit this w.end (15/16 Dec.) – Have a great Christmas Gerry – love to your mum and to you, of course – Richard xx