Michael McWilliams

Biography

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 knowledgeable 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.

VIEW AVAILABLE ARTWORKS IN THE STOCKROOM

Exhibitions

2019
Tattersalls Club Art Prize, Brisbane

2018
Tattersalls Club Art Prize, Brisbane

2017
Tattersalls Club Art Prize, Brisbane
Annual Collectors Exhibition, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

2016
Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, finalist
John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, finalist & Children’s Choice winner

2015
Michael McWilliams: An Aussie Wally, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art
John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, finalist

2014
John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, finalist

2013
John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania
Philip Bacon Gallery, Brisbane

2012
Tattersalls Landscape Art Prize, Brisbane

2011
Ten Days on the Island, Tasmania
Michael McWilliams: Mixed Company, Handmark Gallery, Hobart
Tattersalls’ Landscape Art Prize, Brisbane

2010
Michael McWilliams: Tasmanian Tails, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art
Finalist, Wynne Prize for Landscape Painting, Art Gallery of New South Wales

2009
Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Queensland Art Gallery
Michael McWilliams: Necessary Affections, 08 July - 04 August, Bett Gallery, Hobart

2008
Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, Museum of S.A., Overall Winner
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
Island Art Prize, Ten Days on the Island, Tasmania
Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, Museum of S.A., Overall Winner

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, Collections & Commissions

ACHIEVEMENTS

2016
Tattersalls Club Art Prize, Brisbane
Children's Choice Awards, John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, Winner
John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, Finalist
The Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Finalist

2015
Winner, People’s Choice, John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania

2014
Winner, People’s Choice, Hanger’s Choice, John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape

2013
Winner, Children’s Choice, John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania

2012
Winner, People’s Choice, Bay of Fires Art Prize, St Helens, Tasmania

2011
 John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, finalist

2010
Wynne Prize for Landscape Painting, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania, finalist

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

2007
John Glover Art Prize for Tasmanian Landscape, Tasmania

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

COMMISSIONED WORKS
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Foundation, Launceston, 2020
H.K.H. Kronprinsessen Mary of Denmark, 2018
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2017
In TEERS, Visual Art Exhibition, Ten Days on The Island, 2011
Trust, Visual Art Exhibition, Ten Days On The Island, 2009
Power House Museum, Sydney, 2000
Longford Harvest Festival, 1998
Painting for 150^th Anniversary, Longford, St Patrick’s Day Races, 1996
Painting for Longford Harvest Festival, 1995
Tasmanian Furniture Commission, 1994

COLLECTIONS
Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery                  Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Natural Trust of Australia (Tasmania)             Parliament House, Canberra
Devonport City Art Gallery                                 The Glover Society
Museum of South Australia                                Danish Royal Family
Lauraine Diggins, Melbourne
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmania

Bibliography