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Philip Key meets the painter who is joining the likes of Tracey Emin and Elizabeth Frink with his latest exhibition CHURCH art is not all stained glass windows and carved crucifixes these days. Contemporary artists are increasingly finding church buildings fine places to exhibit works. Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral is a case in point which in recent years has welcomed a number of high profile artists, even commissioned some. Sculptor Elizabeth Frink was one who in the early 1990s was asked to create a piece for the building. Her magnificent Risen Christ for the building proved to be her last work – she died in 1993, just one week after its installation. Tracey Emin is another whose work has been seen there, and now British painter Nicholas Charles Williams has joined the ranks. His huge triptych, titled Desideratum, is on show all through January to mark the opening of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture. Unusually, too, it is described as a secular work. I tracked down Williams to his studio in Cornwall. Cornwall has long been a magnet for artists with its own artists colonies. Those on the south coast became known as the Newlyn School, and many more are now based on the north coast at St Ives, where the light is said to be particularly good. But Williams has gone out of this town and created his own studio based on a former lifeboat station at Newquay, the quasi-Blackpool of the West Country, with tourist attractions all over the town. “I am one of the few artists based here, if not the only one,” he reports. Williams, 46, however, loves to surf and Newquay has some of the best surfing beaches in the country. “It also has,” he tells me, “the same wonderful light that you find elsewhere in the county.” Born in Redhill, Surrey, Williams studied at Richmond College after which he spent some time travelling and occasionally surfing. He finally settled in Cornwall and has lived there for the last 25 years. It was where he established his reputation as one of the country’s leading realist painters. He has exhibited since 1990 in both solo and group shows, sometimes in the West Country but also in London, Wales, Norway and Russia. He was also awarded the prestigious Hunting Art Prize. It was in 1991 that Williams first came to public prominence when the waspish Brian Sewell, one of Britain’s leading art critics, selected his work for his Critic’s Choice exhibition. “The quality of the painting seemed to be astounding,” he said. Fellow critic William Packer has been equally impressed, describing Williams as “one of British art’s well-kept secrets”. He is, he reported, “one of the most accomplished figurative artists of his generation and one of the most unusual.” Visitors to Liverpool Cathedral will likely echo that view – Desid- eratum is certainly accomplished and most decidedly unusual. Its central panel features a man in a thinker-styled pose, while around him other scantily-clad figures float on clouds or gaze uncertainly out of the frame. On the left panel, a bare-chested man wields a pick-axe and, on the right, a topless women stands with a spade. Williams explains that is part of a cycle of 25 related works dealing with feelings and “the desire to pursue something”. All the other works have sold, but Desideratum was so large that it needed a large space to exhibit it. Williams says he approached Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery two years ago and it was the gallery which suggested he talk to the Cathedral. “I spoke to one of the canons and discovered the cathedral did have an interest in the arts and would show a secular work.” In fact, it was displayed at Edinburgh’s St Mary’s Cathedral before it arrived in Liverpool, where it has become a huge talking point. The title, he says, is Latin and expresses “a feeling, a desire for something”. He is quick to point out that the central figure, against expectations, is not a self-portrait. With this work, as with others, he tends to find his sitters in Newquay. “Some of them I already know, some I find on the street and simply ask them if they would be happy to sit for me. It is usually a combination of both.” Being the first to exhibit in the Cathedral during the city’s year as European Capital of Culture was a big factor for him. “It really was one of the most appealing things about showing the work in Liverpool. “I did not really know the city and have no connections with it. But I was so impressed by the cathedral. It is magnificent.” He also loves showing the work in the cathedral as it attracts a different audience for him, not the usual gallery crowd: “It is a very diverse audience, and that’s wonderful.” That said, in the art world he appears to be leading the resurgence of figurative painting in an era of high concept, installations and video art. Ian Dejardin, director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, is one of his many fans, pointing out that he paints like a Counter-Reformation artist. “But his subject matter is worlds away and unique to him, visually and intellectually gripping, so it never looks anything but contemporary.” Desideratum is defiantly contemporary, a work of some power, one which asks questions of its viewer and which is justifiably leading the way in Liverpool’s cultural year. Williams’s art work will be on show in the Cathedral until February 2. Other artists due to exhibit in the cathedral later in the year include the Scottish painter Craigie Aitchison and Tracey Emin, who is planning a neon installation.
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