Artist
Critical Responses and Reflections
Bill Gillon rarely sought the spotlight, preferring to let the paintings speak for themselves. These quotations, drawn from exhibition catalogues, reviews, interviews and personal recollections, offer a record of how his work was understood by others and how he reflected upon it himself. Together they provide a unique insight into the artist, his influences, and the enduring concerns that shaped his work.
"He has always wanted, I think, to be a more skillful painter than anyone else and he takes tremendous pains over his work."
"Each picture is planned in great detail and the degree of sheer professional finish he brings to the final work is salutary in the era of the slap-dash dribble artist."
"Gillon loves to produce the illusion of great distance in his pictures so that the spectator is taken out of the everyday world and into the marvellous world of his invention."
"Gillon creates. He is a master of the trompe l'oeil effect."
— Alan Bold
"The painterly skill and sinuous undertones cultivated by Bill Gillon in Garden of Paradox."
— W. Gordon Smith, 1995
Bill - in his own words 2009
"It's always been people."
"I'd rather still want to just paint."
"That was the only way."
"I still have exactly the same feeling."
"I still have a lot that I wanted to say with my work."
— Bill Gillon, Bernard Terrace Interview, 2009
