Biography

Born in 1965 in London, Simon is the fourth of Aurélie and Brian Wildsmith’s children. Brought up with his three sisters in a home ambiance of creativity and colour, he had great difficulty in abiding in the supposed importance of the formalised world of rules and schools. His understanding of life was elsewhere. At home his father threw rules and caution to the wind, working daily to produce the fabulous multi-coloured images that adorn the pages of so many of his books. The sole boundaries in his work were those of the imagination. At the age of five, Simon left the only school in which he was happy, kindergarten.

Simon, Anna, Clare, Brian, Rebecca

In 1971, the family left London for the south of France. The very tidy and polite residential outskirts of London were abandoned for a strange village where the lines between sculpture and architecture were blurred. Castellaras was imagined and created by Jacques Couelle. He did not consider himself as an architect but as an « écologue ». The framework to his creation was different. The most comfortable place for all species being the mother’s womb, Couelle designed around that principle. It was this environment that helped open Simon’s mind to creation in various dimensions. Space and time, the influences of the sun, the moon and even the earth’s magnetic fields all had their part to play in the layout and structure of many of Jacques Couelle’s houses, notably the one the Wildsmiths lived in.

http://www.archivesnationales.cultu...

Passionate about art and the early Italian Renaissance in particular, as well as the great food and wine to be found in it’s path, his mother and father spent a great deal of school holiday time driving the family throughout Europe from museum to church and gallery to cathedral. What his father had not had the chance to see as a child, he wanted his children to be immersed in and comfortable with. In his opinion acquiring visual literacy is as vital and fundamental for a child as maths and it has been his lifelong pursuit to put this concept into practice in the more than eighty childrens books he has published with Oxford University Press.

http://www.oup.com/oxed/children/au...

The French schools Simon attended in his childhood were unanimous in stating that he was not suited to their particular style of education, so Simon spent his adolescent years testing whatever the English boarding school system could throw at him.

At nineteen, he went to art and design school in Croydon, London (almost). He earned a last minute and rather dubious place there thanks to a portfolio of his sister Rebecca’s drawings and his sister Clare’s photographs. A couple of ceramic pots made at boarding school were thrown in for good measure. There he studied ceramics, both hand made and industrial.

He set up his first workshop in his then girlfriend’s spare bedroom and several others followed. Little by little he made his way and exhibited his painstakingly made pot/objects in a number of galleries in the U.K., France, the USA and Japan.

Reclining figure vase. Gold lustre on earthenware. 1997

Matavase. Lustre on porcelain. 1997

The Novice. Lustre on earthenware. 1996

The inedible bird. Coloured slip and gold lustre on earthenware. 1989

Self portrait at 9am / Autoportrait à 9h. Gold lustre on earthenware. 1997

In 1992 he set up a tableware company to satisfy the growing market of consumer happy people eager to own much and regularly change everything they had. His clients were the chic shops and boutiques of London, Paris, Milan, New York, Singapore… He designed tableware for the Royal Academy of Arts and the National Galleries of Scotland.

"Spears" espresso cup. Bone china. 1993

Coloured lustre mugs. Bone China. 1992

Various Press. 1993.

Stifled by the technical limitations of clay and in need of change, space and time to reflect, Simon left London for France. After a long meandering tour along the rivers of the south west on his motorcycle, My anti biker-look Honda Transalp, 1991

he bought a large and rundown c19th house near Cahors in the Lot region and proceeded to spend a number of years transforming it into his ideal home and studio. Had he been more interested in performing well at school, he might well have been an architect and this was a way of putting that one frustration to bed.

Simon’s house and atelier - Le Pigeonnier

At this time the digital era was truly upon us which was perfect timing since Simon wanted to work on paper with the latest creative tools and technology. Computers were rapidly getting faster and through their capacity for quasi instantaneous calculation and their ever increasing memories, Simon saw the ideal tool for producing the work that was on his mind.

Eloge de la compléxité - détail

A graphics pallet for drawing and painting coupled with a camera and scanner for recording were perfectly suited for expressing what he wanted to say about mankind and society. He invested in the very best quality Japanese made printing equipment - It’s pigment inks were rich and would not fade and the paper on offer was as beautiful as that traditionally used in lithograpy or screen printing.

He now produces prints in very limited editions in sizes from 23x23 to 160x111cm. To date he has had six one man exhibitions of this current work in France and Belgium. The next will be in Singapore in February 2012, followed by Paris in the Spring.

Exhibitions / Expositions

Solo Exhibitions

Current Work

2011

July 12 - 29 - La Chantrerie, rue de la Chantrerie, Cahors, France

2008

October - Le Voilier, 61 La Croisette, Cannes, France

August - Château de Castellaras, Mouans-Sartoux, France

June - Linq Communication, Gent, Belgium

January - Espace Municipal d’Art Contemporain, Cahors, France

2007

June - Espace Architecture Nathalie Larradet, Pau, France

Ceramics

1997 - Galerie L’Etang d’Art, Bages, France

Group Exhibitions

1992 - M et M Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

1991 - Wilson and Gough, London, UK

1989 - Albertson-Peterson Gallery, Winter Park, Florida, USA

1987 - Cré Ceramics, London, UK

1986 - The Ashdown Gallery, Sussex, UK

- London Ecology Centre, London, UK