Tim Wilcox, well-known British authority on watercolour paintings has arrived in Trinidad to mark the 50-year career in watercolours of Jackie Hinkson, one of this country’s most celebrated artists.
Having likened watercolour painting to an action sport in which the viewer “follows every stroke, every mark, every gesture of the brush with the tension and excitement of watching an elite athlete go through her paces” the free public lecture Wilcox will give on watercolours on Tuesday 3 October promises to be very lively.
An exhibition curator and art historian who in 2013 authenticated the National Museum’s Cazabon paintings, Wilcox brings a learned eye to Hinkson’s work which he finds has been influenced by some of the great masters but thoroughly modern, having broken away from the mainstream. “Watercolour may appear a minor art; that may be because it has had so few truly great practitioners. It is easy to do badly, but very difficult to do well.”
Over a forty-year career, Wilcox has curated exhibitions in Europe and the UK, including at the Tate and the British Museum in London and contributed to catalogues for exhibitions in mainland Europe, the USA, Japan, the Royal Academy in London and the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. Now a regular Course Leader of the Art Summer School at the Courtauld Institute, where he studied after Oxford, in the past year he has been an invited speaker in Berlin, Dijon, St David’s (Wales) and at the opening of Great British Drawings at Princeton University Art Museum, USA.
His books include Francis Towne (1997), The Triumph of Watercolour (2005), Samuel Palmer (2005), Constable and Salisbury. The soul of landscape (2011), and Cotman in Normandy (2012).
The lecture starts at 6pm and is followed by a conversation with Jackie Hinkson, at the Art Society, St Vincent Avenue, Federation Park. All are welcome to this event sponsored by BTTT, which includes a 3-week open exhibition at the same venue [opens 3rd October] and the launch of a new book, “The Light in Paint: 50 Years of Watercolour”, published by Paria Press and available from bookstores.