Stephen Wiltshire
Encyclopedia
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
who has been diagnosed with autism
Autism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
. Wiltshire was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, to West India
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
n parents. He is known for his ability to draw a landscape after seeing it just once. He studied Fine Art at City & Guilds Art College.
Early life
Wiltshire was muteSpeech disorder
Speech disorders or speech impediments are a type of communication disorders where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute.-Classification:...
and at the age of three he was diagnosed as autistic. The same year, his father died in a motorcycle accident. At the age of five, Stephen was sent to Queensmill School in London where he expressed interest in drawing. He began to communicate through his art. At the age of eight, he started drawing imaginary post-earthquake cityscape
Cityscape
A cityscape is the urban equivalent of a landscape. Townscape is roughly synonymous with cityscape, though it implies the same difference in urban size and density implicit in the difference between the words city and town. In urban design the terms refer to the configuration of built forms and...
s and cars.
His teachers encouraged his drawing and with their aid Wiltshire learned to speak at the age of five. When he was ten, Wiltshire drew a sequence of drawings of London landmarks, one for each letter, that he called a "London Alphabet".
In 1987, Wiltshire was part of a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
programme The Foolish Wise Ones. A collection of his works, named Drawings, was published that year. Wiltshire can look at a target once and then draw an accurate and detailed picture of it. He once drew the whole of central London after a helicopter trip above it. He can also make imaginary scenes like St. Paul's Cathedral surrounded by flames. In 2003, there was a major retrospective in the Orleans House gallery in Twickenham
Twickenham
Twickenham is a large suburban town southwest of central London. It is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Stephen's work has been the subject of many TV documentaries. Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...
, a neurologist
Neurologist
A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...
, writes about him in the chapter "Prodigies", in his book An Anthropologist on Mars
An Anthropologist on Mars
An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales is a 1995 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks consisting of seven medical case histories of individuals with neurological conditions such as autism and Tourette syndrome...
.
Wiltshire's books include Drawings (1987), Cities (1989), Floating Cities (1991), and Stephen Wiltshire's American Dream (1993). His third book—Floating Cities (Michael Joseph, 1991)—was number one on the Sunday Times best-seller list.
Between 1995 and his graduation in 1998, Wiltshire attended the City and Guilds of London Art School
City and Guilds of London Art School
The City and Guilds of London Art School is an art college in London, England, United Kingdom. It is one of the country's longest established art colleges, and offers courses ranging from Foundation, through B.A. degree, Postgraduate Diploma and M.A...
in Kennington
Kennington
Kennington is a district of South London, England, mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, although part of the area is within the London Borough of Southwark....
, Lambeth
Lambeth
Lambeth is a district of south London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated southeast of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:...
, South London.
In May 2005 Stephen produced his longest ever panoramic memory drawing of Tokyo on a 10 feet (3 m) canvas within seven days following a short helicopter ride over the city. Since then he has drawn Rome, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dubai, Jerusalem and London on giant canvasses. When Wiltshire took the helicopter ride over Rome, he drew it in such great detail that he drew the exact number of columns in the Pantheon
Pantheon, Rome
The Pantheon ,Rarely Pantheum. This appears in Pliny's Natural History in describing this edifice: Agrippae Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; in columnis templi eius Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum, sicut in fastigio posita signa, sed propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.from ,...
.
In 2006, Stephen Wiltshire was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to art. In September 2006 Stephen opened his permanent gallery in the Royal Opera Arcade, Pall Mall, London.
On 15 February 2008, ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
named him Person of the Week. In his first intimate interview with The Independent in 2009 he revealed his dreams, aspirations, idols and biggest regrets.
In July 2009 he was an ambassador of the Children's Art Day in the United Kingdom. His work is now popular all over the world, and is held in a number of important collections.
In October 2009 Stephen completed the last work in the series of panoramas, an 18 feet (5.5 m) memory drawing of his spiritual home, New York. Following a 20-minute helicopter ride over the city he sketched the view of New Jersey, Manhattan, the Financial District, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn over five days at Pratt Institute, the world-famous college of art and design, in New York.
His most recent projects included sketching Sydney and visiting to Bermuda National Gallery where the sale of his drawing of Hamilton City broke auction records. In June 2010, Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
auctioned off an iconic oil painting of his titled Times Square at Night.
Stephen Wiltshire started a tour of China in September 2010, with a first project taking him to Shanghai.
In 2011, Stephen Wiltshire has been made an honorary Fellow of the Society of Architectural Illustration
Society of Architectural Illustration
The Society of Architectural Illustration was founded by Eric Monk in 1975 to encourage the use of the architectural perspective or model as a valuable part of the communication process between architect and the general public...
(SAI).
His most recent project took him to New York to create 250 feet (76.2 m) long panoramic memory drawing of New York which is now displayed on a giant billboard at JFK airport. It is a part of a global advertising campaign for the Swiss bank UBS that carries the theme "We will not rest", the New York Times reports.
See also
- Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into the BrainBeautiful Minds (TV miniseries)Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into The Brain was a 2006 documentary on super-talented savants. Prof. Gerhard Roth of the University of Bremen in Germany, and Dr. Darold Treffert of the University of Wisconsin Medical School in USA introduced savants from different countries...
, a documentary on a number of similarly gifted people, including Wiltshire