Nick Moore reviews a recent exhibition of paintings by Frank Avray Wilson at Whitford Fine Art, London.

Moore writes: “The first thing one is aware of walking into a room full of Avray Wilson’s paintings is the vibrant colour; vibrant in that it appears to be alive and pulsing, even glowing, bringing to mind stained glass or a kaleidoscope. This implies light coming through the paintings, as if they are back lit; but this effect is due to the intensity of the colours used, mostly primaries, and that they are thickly laid on with a knife; but it also has much to do with the strategic use of black. In a lot of the paintings there is a substantial black content, not only in patches or clumps, but as a lining to the other colours. He uses the black to outline and separate the colours, thus enhancing their intensity in the way that the Expressionists did, and as he had practiced in the figurative paintings he had done in 1948; he learned from looking at Rouault and the German Expressionists…”