William Oxer F.R.S.A.

ABOUT WILLIAM

A passionate artist driven by traditional ideas of how beauty should be represented, William formed the intellectual basis to his work under the tutelage of Professor Regius Peter Davidson of Oxford University.

William travelled widely through Europe with Peter and his wife, Professor Jane Stevenson, effectively being given a Grand Tour as a fair swap for his driving skills. After graduating, William was offered a place at the Prince of Wales' Institute of Architecture but was advised by them to take the position of assistant to Alec Cobbe, artist, restorer and collector.

Living in at Hatchlands Park, Surrey where The Cobbe Collection is based, William was to assist in various projects including an exhibition for the Queens Gallery, Buckingham Palace and large-scale designs for interiors in historic houses such as Goodwood House, Petworth House and Hatchlands Park. He lived at the latter back in 1996, working with restorer and interiors expert, Alec Cobbe.

Over the past 25 years, William has undertaken regular portrait commissions for private clients and produced artworks for exhibitions and collectors across the world. His work also includes period decoration and exhibition design in places such as Christie’s and the Building of Bath Museum, also known as The Museum of Bath Architecture.

Professor Sir Roger Scruton, a renowned writer and philosopher who made a television documentary in 2009 entitled Why Beauty Matters, said of him: “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.”

Discussing his chosen angle as an artist, William continued: “I am perhaps something of an old soul. My works are restful and somehow quiet, demure, elegaic. I enjoy the evenings of autumn and winter by the fire, painting smaller, more intimate and reflective works. Perhaps this is a distant feeling of past roots of the north.”

Last year William was approached by the Royal Society of Arts to be made a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), an award granted to individuals that the RSA judges to have made outstanding achievements related to the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.