Springfield Gardens, New York
E-mail: Dwilson16@nyc.rr.com
David Gerard Wilson was born in December 1953 in Roseau, the Commonwealth of Dominica, West Indies. He has been painting and drawing from childhood, and although the thought of art as a career has always nagged him, for reasons incomprehensible to himself, he has avoided that step. He immigrated to the United States in September of 1976 and began his advanced academic studies at Manhattan College, Riverdale, Bronx. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and minored in foreign languages, namely Spanish and French, from York College of the City University of New York. He presently teaches Spanish and French at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens NY.
Unfortunately, the disapproval by his father, Henzie A. Wilson, of art as a career has been a sore spot that constantly invokes regrets, a possible source of the internal conflict for his career choice. Wilson is a self-taught artist who, never having studied art in a formal classroom setting, seeks inspiration from his numerous visits to museums in every city of the United States that he and his wife, Yvonne, visit. Trips to London in 2000, 2005 and Paris in 2003 have turned into museum-hopping excursions with the tacit approval of his wife of 28 years in tow.
Wilson has always been interested in art since childhood and credits his mother, Mrs.(Nurse)Leoma A. Wilson, (now 98 years old) with the initial spark of inspiration for the style in which he now paints. While teaching his brother and him to read, she inadvertently stimulated his imagination and ability to perceive alternate realities by asking his brother to identify the map of Italy. Unable to answer, his late brother, Edward, was given the unforgettable hint: Italy is kicking Sicily. This anthropomorphic depiction of a map was the initial source of Wilson's visual punning faculties.
That observation instantly sparked his
life-long quest to perceive alternate realities in whatever image that he
beheld. This initial inspiration was further intensified by his childhood
delight in the double entendre lyrics of the Mighty Sparrow, the most popular
calypso singer from the twin Caribbean islands, Trinidad and Tobago. Another
source of inspiration was his reading of the suggestions for creative inventions
by Leonardo da Vinci.
"The artist can further enhance his creative
faculties by staring at stains on the wall and therein perceive whatever he
wishes to see,"
has been Wilson's modus operandi. It has been the critical
statement of approval that reinforced the initial suggestion that his mother's
hint had provided. Finally, on discovering the double imagery of the famous
surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí, Wilson instantly knew that that was the style
he wanted to advance and take to a higher level.
Wilson calls his style "Anthropomorphic
Perception: An exercise in Ultra-perceptive plausible juxtaposition". He
claims that he can perceive an alternate reality in whatever image he beholds.
The alternate realities that he finds when he contemplates an image are
strategically and plausibly juxtaposed commonplace objects that he calls mnemonic
objects. They remind him of things from his personal history. The recurrent
hand of bananas is a deferential reference to the hand of his
father, (the hand that fed me) who worked with the banana industry in
Dominica for seventeen of the artist's formative years. By juxtaposing these
objects in as realistic a manner as they are experienced in his paintings, he
can create a three dimensional illusion which produces a fourth dimension- the
hidden image.
Another dimension to his anthropomorphic perception reveals Wilson's passion for the history of his African ancestry. The juxtaposition of commonplace objects to create human form is reminiscent of the reductive and reprobate equation to merchandise that the institution of slavery imposed on his African ancestors, bought and sold at market, which virtually negated their humanity.
Wilson says that his work also seeks to
demonstrate the existence of a parallel universe that the viewer can then train
his eyes to see. He uses the two-dimensional nature of the canvas and the three
dimensional illusion of traditional representational painting to fool the
viewer's eyes into perceiving co-existing and interdependent realities. This
he seeks to demonstrate by revealing the plethora of plausibly juxtaposed
objects that can be found in old master paintings, hitherto unseen by the
untrained eyes. He has extended this technique of perception to show the hidden
images that he has found in many an old master painting, including some by
Leonardo, Raphael, Vermeer, Manet, Matisse, Picasso, Velasquez, Ingres and many
more.
Since 1980, he has embarked on a quest to
build a collection of works in that style. This collection has since grown to
approximately 350 - 400 paintings of various sizes. He is now working with
sculpture, trying to show that these are not impossible images and that
one can indeed experience these perceptions in sculpture.
Wilson's ultimate aspiration is to found a
museum that will house his collection with the stipulated mission of
demonstrating to the viewer the power of perception. Wilson and his wife are
presently working towards acquiring a building in which to house their
collection. Mrs. Yvonne A. C. Wilson Mrs Leoma A. Wilson at age 88 (1999) Mrs Leoma A. Wilson at age 95 (2006) 
