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William E. Rochfort |
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Fine Art
Limited Edition Fine Art Prints Available in a Range
of Sizes & Formats including Giclée Archival
Fine Art Prints and Boxed Canvas |
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See website of
Visionary Art, East Molesey, Surrey for full
details |
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About The Artist
Born in 1985, William grew
up in Lymington on the south coast of England.
After completing a foundation course in Art at
the Arts Institute in Bournemouth, he studied
Illustration and Fine Art at Kingston
University Surrey. His work has been exhibited at
Christies in London in support of charity, and
he has held art shows in London and Hampshire. |
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William has a passion for
oil painting, and finds inspiration for his
narrative scenes in daily life. He cites his
love of American films as an influence,
inspiring him to create scenes in which he
builds the settings and inhabits them with
characters to tell the story. |
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'Since early 2004 I have
had a great interest in Illustration and its
influence is clear in all my work. In 2006 I
began oil painting, producing fairly large
pieces of work all of which involve a narrative.
My target audience is the public rather than the
Art establishment and I have no interest in
tricking them or producing work that needs a
large amount of interpretation. To quote one of
my biggest influences, “I paint real pictures
for real people”.
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More often than not I
find that trying to produce clear,
self-explanatory work is a much harder
discipline than keeping anything from the viewer
but I have great enjoyment in painting images
that are capable of telling a complete story.
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I focus my subject matter
around themes that stem from American
Illustration and Pop culture; themes of
innocence, ambition and relationships portrayed
through the situations that people find
themselves in. It's not a naivety to the real
world, and my work in the past has been
misconstrued as Idealism, but this is wrong
because the situations that I choose to
illustrate do happen, they just seem to be often
overlooked artistically in favour of more
controversial topics.
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Each piece requires my
full attention so I normally work on one piece
at a time and obsess over it. I get a lot of
inspiration from films, especially the
mainstream American Cinema for their exaggerated
portrayal of things. Steven Spielberg is a
brilliant story teller and his films never fail
to inspire me. The nostalgia that Hollywood
drench a lot of their films in to produce these
epic movies is something I find incredibly
influential.
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There are a lot of 20th
century artists that inspire me. Amongst them is
Norman Rockwell who, in my opinion, was a genius
when it came to his technical skill and story
telling ability. The intensity in Walter
Sickert's work always makes me want to paint and
Edgar Degas who said, 'Art is not what you see,
but what you make others see' is my favourite
artist for his capability to do just that,
capturing moments with such purity inside
compositions that were years ahead of his time.
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My ambition is to keep
painting and keep selling so that I can
hopefully make a living out of doing what I
love. It seems ridiculous to me that for an
artist to sell is a taboo within Art circles and
I tend to ignore the negativity that shrouds
commercial art. |
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Ultimately I'm striving
to become a member of such Academies as The
Royal Institute of Oil Painters, The New English
Art Club and Royal Academy of Arts, amongst
others. ' |
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• 2004 - 2005 |
Foundation Course in the Arts at Bournemouth
Arts Institute. |
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• 2005 – 2006 |
Completed a year studying Illustration at
Kingston University before changing to Fine
Art. |
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• July 2006
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First
Exhibition of my work at the New Forest Show
with Lloyds TSB Private Banking. |
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• October 2006 |
Displayed at Christies South Kensington in
aid of The Fortune Centre of Riding Therapy. |
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• June 2007 |
Approached by Catriona Nason - Visionary
Art/Arty Prints - re representation
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• August 2007 |
Signed a contract with Visionary Art / Arty
Prints. |
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• January 2008 |
Exhibition at the Fountain Gallery in
Hampton. |
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• February 2008 |
Appeared in the Fine Art Trade Guild
magazine ‘Art Business Today’ |
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• May 2008 |
Appeared in Artist and Illustrators
magazine. |
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• June 2008 |
Final
Degree Show at Kingston University. |
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• July 2008 |
Producing work for the Henley Rowing
Regatta. |
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• July 2008 |
3rd
Prize in Artist and Illustrators ‘Artist of
the Year’ competition |
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• July 2008 |
Exhibiting at ‘Art in Action’ |
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• August 2008 |
Producing work for The Edinburgh Festival |
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