Roy Wilkins

Roy Wilkins is an expressionist painter based in Melbourne Australia. He creates large scale mixed media paintings on canvas. Born 1 January 1964 in Greenwich, South East London. Roy settled in Melbourne in 1999 and began painting the same year. He is largely self taught with a lifelong passion for art and art history.

Roy's paintings are created by experimentation with acrylics, ink, salt, drawing, collage, stencilling and spray paint. This is applied in layers of patterns, shapes, lines and colour. They are reworked and layered until satisfying results are revealed.

The motivation for painting comes from feelings and reactions to music stimulae, usually repetitive electronic music. The images are emotional landscapes in a spontaneous abstract expressionist style. The subject matter is derived from tribal masks and incorporates abstracted iconography. Artistic influences are Jean-Michel Basquiat, Albert Tucker and Jean De Buffet.

On arrival in Melbourne Roy worked at Heide Art Gallery preparing the gallery for exhibitions. During this time he was privileged to view Albert Tucker's collection. This was a major motivation to dedicate his life to painting.

From 1979 to 1987 Roy was involved in public art and murals for the Greater London Council. Since 2008 Roy has had 4 solo exhibitions in Melbourne. He has been involved in group exhibitions around Melbourne since 2002 and was a finalist in the Smorgon Steel Art Prize in 2001. In 2009 he was awarded Best in Show at Roberts McCubbin Art Show where the school purchased one of his paintings for their collection. In 2010 he won the prize of Highly Commended. His work is held in private collections in Australia, Spain, Portugal and England.

Three of his paintings will be featured in the forthcoming short film, Deep, produced and directed by Suzy Markovski, starring Scott Major from Neighbours.