I first encountered the work of Amber Wilson in 2013 at Porous Moonlight, a painting show at the unassuming Papakura Art Gallery, curated by Wilson’s friend (and then studio-mate) Imogen Taylor. Her works, all oils, hung alongside paintings by an unlikely, but totally satisfying, assortment of living and dead artists, including Frances Hodgkins, Denys Watkins, Nicola Farquhar, and Claudia Jowitt. In a show of confident painters, Wilson stood out for her superb technique, as well as the quiet sense of delight that her works conveyed. Here was a painter who knew her medium intimately and loved to play with it. What I did not know then, and would not discover until earlier this year, was that oil painting was just one part of Wilson’s practice. She was also a watercolourist of great ability; she is, I think, one of our best. …
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