Peter Wileman FROI RSMA FRSA

Highly acclaimed landscape artist Peter Wileman was born in Middlesex in 1946. Known for his dazzling abstracted oil landscapes, Wileman has enjoyed a relationship with Thompson's Galleries for a number of years. With constant showings in both Thompson's locations at Aldeburgh & London, Wileman has built a solid reputation as one of the UK's finest landscape artists today.

Peter Wileman gravitated toward painting from a young age, picking up his first paintbrush in the early years of childhood. After leaving school Peter went on to become a junior at Hallmark Cards where he studied lettering and design. Peter's time at Hallmark gave him solid grounding in colour awareness, formal structure, and design. This experience enabled him to become the Art Editor for a number of IPC magazines in the following years.

Looking for an opportunity to develop his own artwork, Peter left his budding design career to become a freelance artist. From there, Peter carved out a very successful freelance career, producing a substantial body of highly expressive work inspired by Britain's coves and harbours. Peter's medium of choice is oil, as he finds it most adaptable to changes of light and mood, which reflects his style of atmospheric landscape painting.

Peter is the former President and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, a Member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, the East Anglian Group of Marine Artists and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Peter has produced many books on his technique of painting with light where he demonstrates how to create atmospheric oil landscapes with stunning effects.

Artist Statement

"I could not imagine a single day passing without talking about, reading about, or actually taking part in some kind of activity concerning art. Like a moth is drawn to a flame, a painter is drawn to the light, and although I have tried to express myself with painting in many different forms, mediums and styles over the years, my path has lead me inexorably, like so many others before me, to try and capture that elusive quality of light, that only a shimmering sunset, dawn of a new day, dazzling sparkle of reflection off both sea and river presents to one who is prepared to both look and see".

Painting Style

Peter's style is built around the exploration of light and its effect on subjects within his landscape paintings. Wileman's style is bold and vigorous, both in the use of contrasting colour and handling of the paint. Seeking to convey an emotional response to the drama of a sunset, or the mood of brewing stormclouds, Wileman's finished products are the manifestation of real human encounters with nature. The results are vibrant, colourful depictions of British landscapes that are a blend of realism, atmosphere and abstraction.

"My painting is all about light and how we see it and react to it. It is what drives artists on. It is why most of us paint. Yet light can be as elusive as a wisp of smoke as we try to capture it in all its many moods."

Awards & Distinctions

The Frank Herring Award.
The Cornelissen & Son Award for outstanding work.
The Clerc Fowle Gold Medal for the most outstanding group of paintings.
DAS Prize for a work of distinction.