John Kingsley, RSW PAI

John Kingsley was born in Glasgow in 1956 and studied Drawing and Painting at Glasgow School of Art. He has exhibited with the Royal Scottish Academy, Royal Glasgow Institute, Royal Scottish Society for Painters in Watercolour, and Paisley Art Institute (PAI) where he served as a Council member for more than twenty years before being awarded the Diploma of the PAI in 1999.

John was a finalist at the Hunting Art prizes in London on five occasions: his work being Highly Commended in 1996. He won the Paisley Art Institute prize in 2003; the Reid Kerr College Award for painting in 2006 and the Watermark Award at the RSW in 2013. In 2015, he was elected member of RSW (Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour).

John has exhibited widely throughout the UK, in particular in London at Duncan R Millar Fine Art and the Contemporary Fine Art Gallery, Eton. His work features in the collections of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, Tommy Hilfiger, Paisley Museum and Art Gallery, CMS (formerly Dundas and Wilson) and Sara Lee UK among many others. 

John his known for his landscapes of France and Scotland, which are a skilled masterclass in colour, light and shadow And a joy to behold. Yet he is also a superb painter of still life works and abstracts. He likes to focus on composition and shape in his still lifes, often flattening objects and playing with perspective. In his abstract work, he resists the urge to turn maks into representational image and, instead, allows himself to be surprised by the turn the paintings may take. The resulting pictures are full of emotion and vitality. Finally, John loves to explore line and form through his drawings and mark makings with charcoal. All in all, a versatile, professional, skilled artist.