Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

Michael McWilliams’ exquisitely painted works have the aura of precious collectors’ items. This is not only because he decorates antique pieces that are in themselves collectables – cupboards, chests, tables – anything from clocks to cellos really – but because of his meticulous craftsmanship and the distinctive quality of his creative imagination. A number of ingredients come unusually together in McWilliams: he is a fine painter, an animal lover, is knowledgable about furniture and restores it, and has a witty sense of humour. He has the uncanny ability to select the animals, the setting, the arrangement, that is just right for this piece of furniture. The finely painted realism of these animals – often astonishing – is matched with wit and an elegant sense of design. Each animal has its distinct personality and seems quite naturally to belong to the piece – whether it’s magpies playing draughts on a pie-cupboard, plovers guarding a ballot-box or fish serenely swimming across a table-top, watched by a cat.

McWilliams generally paints only colonial furniture items in Australian timbers – cedar, blackwood, and kauri ant Huon pine. He knows his antiques, having as a child accompanied his father on buying trips for the antique shop in Longford, Tasmania, of which he is now co-proprietor. In recent years the demand for his work has increased considerably. He has won a number of art awards and his works have been selected for several national exhibitions.

If you haven’t previously seen a Michael McWilliams work, at first glance you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled across some undiscovered colonial artist – a William Gould perhaps – for these images of a peaceable kingdom of animals seem to arise from some innocent past, now irretrievably lost.

But look again and you’ll see that these paintings must be contemporary for only from the perspective of the present do we see that this gentle rural world is, for most of us, a thing of the past. Besides, design elements like the arrangement of forks and crab claw in Crab Attack are clearly contemporary. And furthermore, no colonial artist painted such a range of animals with such affection. Many of the domestic and farm animals are known to him by name; they are portraits of animal friends.

Which is not to say that his animal kingdom is all sweetness and light. These works are highly sophisticated and often have an engagingly humorous or occasionally sinister edge. Look at that smug cat sitting proprietorially on a wooden box containing a wattle bird, a silver eye, a sparrow and other birds in Olive’s Toy Box. It reminds me of the cat terrifying a caged goldfinch in Hogarth’s The Graham Children (1742) which Sir Kenneth Clark described as ‘perhaps the greatest cat in art’. McWilliams’ cat hasn’t yet pounced; it is enjoying the situation, gloating, the way cats do.

Occasionally he makes amusing reference to colonial works. In Midnight Snack, a painting of a cow on a meat-safe, the cow is reminiscent of historical stock portraits, which proud owners would commission to commemorate the pedigree of their prize animals. McWilliams’ cow, like her historical forebears, is a fine, fat, exaggeratedly large animal – the picture of pastoral perfection. She is even illumined by the golden rays of the setting sun. But she’s chewing! Straws of hay protrude from her mouth as she stares out at the viewer, deadpan. So much for traditional bovine dignity.

In one of his major works, Sheep at Blackwood Creek, the wide landscape panel of lushly painted bushland has a dream-like quality. At first you see only the sheep – one stares out at you from the foreground creed – but then you notice that the mysterious depths of the bush are alive with animals, among them a possum, a bandicoot, a crow, a night heron and, movingly, for it is now extinct, a Tasmanian Tiger. The irony of sheep dominating the foreground of this Australian arcadia is telling, for the clearing of land for pasture was a major factor in the Tiger’s extinction. Michael McWilliams’ paintings aren’t as innocent as they seem.

Victoria Hammond.

2009

Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Queensland Art Gallery

Michael McWilliams: Necessary Affections, 08 July – 04 August, Bett Gallery, Hobart

2008

Who Let the Dogs Out? : The Dog in Contemporary Art, Macquarie City Art Gallery, 8 Feb – 30 March; Hazlehurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, 16 May – 29 June

2007

Michael McWilliams: It’s Not Easy Being Green, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

Michael McWilliams: Pranksters, Players and Performers, Bett Gallery, Hobart

2005

Michael McWilliams: All the World’s a Stage, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

2003

Michael McWilliams: Friends, Foes & Favourites, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

2001

Thylacine: From Pest to Pedestal: Recent Works by Michael McWilliams, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

Response to the Island, Salamanca Arts Centre, Long Gallery

1999 – 2001

Pets, Preys and Predators: Introduced Animals in Recent Australian Art, touring regional New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, curated by Victoria Hammond

1998 – 2000

Mapping Identity, exhibition curated by Noel Frankham touring Australia

1999

Michael McWilliams: Painted Furniture, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

1997

Michael McWilliams, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

1996

Tasmanian Art Awards, Eskleigh, Perth, Tasmania

1993 – 1996

Green Oaks Gallery, Launceston

1995

City of Hobart Art Prize

Lauraine Diggins Fine Art Decorative Arts Survey

1994

Exhibition of Excellence, Victoria League House, Launceston
Trust Bank Awards, Launceston

1993 – 1995

Tasmanian Arts Council, Esk Branch, Local Artists Exhibition, Longford

1992

Alice Bale Art Award, Caulfield, Victoria

ACHIEVEMENTS:

2008

The Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, South Australian Museum, Overall Winner

Fleurieu Bienalle Art Prize, Finalist

Wynne Prize for Landscape, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Finalist

John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, Hon. Mention

2006

John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, Hon. Mention

2005

The Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, The South Australian Museum, Winner

2004

John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, Winner

1996

Tasmanian Art Award, Eskleigh, Perth, Tasmania, Winner

1994

Trust Bank Open Art Award, Launceston, Tasmania, Winner

COMISSIONED WORKS

Painting for 150th Anniversary, Longford, St Patrick’s Day Races, 1996

Painting for Longford Harvest Festival, 1995

COLLECTIONS:
Parliament House, Canberra
Powerhouse Museum, Tasmania
Lauraine Diggins, Melbourne
Queensland Art Gallery

Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Queensland Art Gallery, 2008, p.195

Artlink, vol. 28, no. 1, 2008, Contents page, Fuel for Thought: Oil, Energy, Conflict and Art

Hammond, Victoria, Michael McWilliams: All The World’s A Stage, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne

Lovell, Ruth, It’s Not easy Being Green, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne