Artists > Juxtapositions of Will & Chris Illsley

Will Illsley

It’s taken over 40 years for me to return to where it all started.

I went to art college in Loughborough in the late sixties, drawing painting and sculpting – after which I followed a course in design at Leicester College of Art.

Several years of teaching was followed by starting a pottery in 1978. In 1987 Chris and I moved to Stamford with the family and set up a gallery selling the work of over forty other artists alongside our own. We closed the gallery in 2005 after almost twenty years in business, and two years later I closed the pottery and returned to sculpture, and then painting.

I paint in acrylic and mixed media and to a greater or lesser extent the work is abstract – I enjoy exploring the juxtaposition of shape, colour and ambiguous visual imagery, put together from past thoughts of objects and landscapes in improvised compositions which evolve slowly through an intuitive process of change and development.

Chris Illsley

A degree in Printed textiles at Leicester College of Art and visits to the Far East during my early twenties, have given me a lasting interest in colour, pattern and texture.

Most of my paintings are of still life using decorative ceramics, fabrics and flowers as my subject matter.

Some of my work is mixed media on thick watercolour paper applying collage and torn tissue paper to the surface first.

I then spray and diffuse acrylic inks and apply opaque acrylic using rollers and materials that will leave a printed pattern.

The next stage is to establish my design with water soluble pencils and thin layers of acrylic – slowly building up to more intense areas of colour. Often I finish a piece with oil paints to achieve fine detail and stronger colours.

Other paintings are in oil on canvas or board which may be textured with collage. Most are table top arrangements exploring shapes, colour and pattern. Some are very stylised graphic images others are simple still life studies done for the pure enjoyment of using the oil paints.