William Joseph Oxer B.A. F.R.S.A. b. 1973
Can one singularly British gentleman be simply described as an English figurative painter? William Oxer (as the late Sir Roger Scruton saw quickly in the first evenings of their friendship gathered around the fire at his farm near Malmesbury), is not merely a painter; he is a distinctive sensibility, with a poetic vision.’ Scruton felt that William had much creativity bound in beauty and classical, orderly approach to life. He spoke of his art being ‘affirmative, evocative and forgiving’, offering in short, ‘a return to the true and serious tradition’.
Working primarily in oils using methods and materials that are of the highest calibre and most authentic, William’s paintings bringing poetry, music and architecture as a ethereal vapour that seamlessly binds us amongst our attempt to understand many of the Arts. His quiet study of what is not said, nor in truth cannot ever be said, but only transmitted somehow, brings out an art that inflects and both mirrors and holds up said mirror, to us, as the viewer.
William’s paintings may be considered, initially, traditional, held together by the ghosts of historical methods and materials that many have opposed or considered unfashionable, historical; and therefore perhaps irrelevant, to the irreverent flippancy of many of today’s dopamine-led ‘hits’.
Immediacy and shock are not to be felt here. William’s paintings invite one to slow or be slowed by taking a little more time, to sit and be privy to a complex sea of emotion, hidden, demure, restful, archaic.
To sit with one of William’s paintings is to be still within oneself, a cob’s web strand to that infinite souce, yet to immerse oneself as an honored private guest into the painting’s layered world of the simplest things that are measured only by our response that can neither be placed as originating solely in the heart or mind.
This experience is not as voyeur, mind; but as trusted, intimate owner, a quiet and tentative companion; permission granted to look into the most unfathomable complexities of emotion, tempered by the simplicity of an almost routine scene or seting - and little else.
In one artwork, perhaps the viewer is secretly joining forces in an empathic still-point, resonating with the experiences of the infinite expanse of human life and all its heartfelt emotion. In another, hidden intimacy or exploration and display and intimate exploration of one’s own sexual power might be at play. Another might share the slowness of time or the grief or loss held in a shaft of fading afternoon light. William juxtaposes these pieces, like a space in the soul shining ever so slightly brighter than street lamps awakening in a half-lit twilight, with a daring to experiment freely without fear. Perceived tradition or lack of the ‘new’ can bring about contempt prior to investigation. William weaves subtly, allegorically, with both new, avant-garde, classical or historical approaches and his methods vibrate like a soft vulnerable soul in each work. As one who has painted ever since a pencil or crayon was placed in his hand, William believes that as long as the artwork is, along all levels, given the stable foundation and virtue of human emotional experience, any first attempt or even second, to categorise his work can quickly result in the onlooker having to readjust his whole emotional paramters.
Any such veiled and subtle layering, both physical and by meaning, synthesises to produce an artwork that reveals itself further as one lives with it.
William’s paintings can be both erotic and demure; melancholy and hopeful; wistful and whimsical. Some works have been categorized as echoing the Romantic, Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite traditions, yet they are more intimate, private, vulnerable than merely romantic. His promotion of the beautiful goes further than the accepted discourse; his sense of beauty lies in a hollowed-out heart after a break-up; a watery winter’s sky; a sleeping dog, unaware of anything other than its sensations of being present for life’s sake - and such contradistinctive is their romance. remain deeply personal in their atmosphere and emotional force. He is known for works that explore beauty, inwardness, longing and private reflection: moments in which the visible world seems to open onto something quieter, more mysterious and more enduring.
Although often centred on the human figure, his work also extends into interiors, seascapes and the natural world; yet all focuses or projects inward toward the emotive, spiritual human experience of this. Across all subjects there is a consistent concern with stillness, tenderness and the poetic charge of ordinary experience, with hidden meanings sometimes deliberately obtuse or obfuscating, that the immediate sense that his art as ‘is’, can be appreciated and meditated on simply for conveying what cannot always be extrapolated from any system or formula, new or ancient. His paintings do not seek spectacle so much as resonance: a lowered gaze, a sleeping figure, a room, a shoreline, a flower, or a remembered light.
Each work is presented with the same regard for the object as for the image. William often makes or finishes his own frames, using centuries-old methods including gesso, gilding and patination, so that frame and painting are conceived as a single, sympathetic whole.
He undertakes commissions worldwide.
William Oxer Artist Biography
William has undertaken many roles and projects ever since he was able to consider himself legally ‘of age’ to be a professional artist. He has always painted.
Rather than take any route to an art school, he decided to follow his love of language and its conveyance and subtlety in poetry and prose. As a young man in his ‘teens, after having two years taken out purely to paint, William undertook a degree in English at the University of Warwick in 1993, graduating with Honours under the tutelage of the brilliant mind of Professor Peter Davidson, now at Oxford University.
Alongside his academic work he wrote poetry, composed music and painted, developing an artistic language rooted in literature, atmosphere and the inner life and undertook a Grand Tour with both Peter and his wife Jane Stevenson, author of such fictional works as The Empress Of The Last Days and a vast tome on the artist Edward Burra.
All three remain close friends, with a work life integrative, interactive and indubitably melding their common craft with each of their complimenting areas of expertise.
After graduating and after the lengthy Grand tour, now in his twenties, William undertook private commissions, from Country House decoration to concerts with his won compositions, illustrated with artworks as part of an interactive experience held subversive by the need for the audience to simply listen, look and be still of mind and heart. William composed many series of musical pieces, which were performed alongside an exhibition of his paintings at Trafalgar Park near Salibury at the invitation of its then owner, Michael Wade.
Members of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra played before a ticketed audience, bringing together painting, music and poetry in an early expression of the interdisciplinary sensibility that continues to shape his work.
After university, Oxer was offered a place at the then Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture. On the recommendation of the Institute, he instead accepted a formative position as assistant to the late Alec Cobbe CVO, artist, restorer, collector and custodian of the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands Park.
Living and working in that environment, Oxer was exposed to the disciplines of historic interiors, restoration, connoisseurship and the serious traditions of European art. His early professional life included work connected with private collections, historic houses, museum and exhibition design, and decorative arts projects. These experiences deepened his understanding of painting not only as image, but as object, setting and inheritance.
Painting, however, remained the centre of his life. Over the years his work has been acquired by private collectors in Britain and abroad, shown in London exhibitions, and used in charitable and institutional contexts. In 2017 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
The late philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, a long-standing friend and champion of Oxer’s art, wrote:
“William Oxer is not merely a painter; he is a distinctive sensibility, with a poetic vision he explores in many media. His art is affirmative, evocative and forgiving, and offers us, in short, a return to the true and serious tradition.”
Oxer has also worked with Oxford colleges and Catholic institutions. For Campion Hall, University of Oxford, he painted Conversation Piece, commissioned to mark the election of the first five female Fellows of the Hall. He has also undertaken restoration, frame-making and sacred art projects, including work connected with the Hall’s collection and a large crucifix for the Catholic Chaplaincy in Oxford.
Today, William lives and works in a Georgian Old Rectory in the Cotswold hills, near Painswick, with his partner and five dogs of varying age and size. His work continues hourly as a lifelong artistic calling: to make paintings that honour beauty, memory and emotional truth and that offer, in a distracted age, a return to stillness and beauty, even when that beauty is raw, emotional, vulnerable and quietly intimate.