Australian painter Colley Whisson has been painting from the age of 20, encouraged by his father, Eric Whisson, also an artist.
Colley Whisson uses a bright palette and an appealingly textural rendering technique, in which forms are defined by bold strokes of heavy paint, laid on with very visible evidence of the brush.
He utilizes both crisply delineated edges and contrastingly blurred passages. You can see this better when his work is reproduced larger than the small images I’ve displayed above. I’ve included a detail crop of the last image at bottom.
Whisson has a fascination for boldly defined forms, both in their geometry and in the value and color contrasts in which he delights. I particularly enjoy his room interiors, in which the geometry of forms and his economy of rendering come to the fore.
Whisson’s art has been featured in magazines like International Artist and Australian Artist. He is the author of the instructional book Impressionist Painting Made Easy.
Whisson conducts workshops in Australia and the U.S. There is a video here of one of his workshops at the Tuscon Art Academy, and painter Ed Turpening gives a description of his experiences with a Whisson workshop, including a video demo and a description of Whisson’s approach and materials.
Glad to see a post on Whisson.I discovered his work sometime back on the web, can’t remember where, as is the case with the web quite often.
I was immediately drawn to his superb design, use of color, hard and soft edges and as you said “bold strokes of heavy paint”. He makes it look effortless.
Nice work as usual Charlie.
I also had learned of his work a while back and loved the brushwork. I had never seen the close-up shot and that was really neat to see.
This impressionist artist is great, i hope many people will be able to express themselves through visual arts like this.
This kind of articles may well encourage others.
Keep up the good work
Wow, this is gorgeous stuff. Thanks for posting…
Incredible talent!Although I gravitate to inspirational and spiritual art, I still appreciate visual arts like the ones above.
Awesome Australian painter!
I had never heard of this artist till, purely by chance, I got his book, Creating Impressionist Landscapes in Oil, at my local (Vermont) library. His work is brilliant, and that is no pun. His explications are fine and so much appreciated. Too many times, I’ve taken a class or read a book by an artist, and they are, almost without exception, vague. Colley’s art and book are exceptional. Exquisite use of the paint, itself, and the colors!!!!!!!!!! Oh, my!!!!!!!!! Particularly appreciate his direction to draw, draw, draw, before committing to the paint- as an exercise in formulating thought before painting. Wonderful, careful, thoughtful paintings.