William Utermohlen and his self-portraits
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He was a very nice man, he was very shy, an only child with a difficult background. It was not until he received a scholarship to the Philadelphia School of Art that his life changed.
He was a very carefully trained artist, a superb draughtsman. We had a good marriage; it worked well. We enjoyed each other’s company and we were quite different. I was the one who made all the friends and all the noise; he was very quiet and got on with his work. He was adored by his students whom he taught at City and Guilds. He was a good teacher, but he did have the freedom to be able to paint when he wanted to, which was good.
When he got ill something happened to him. He lost that sense of preparation associated with is draughtsmanship. He became a German expressionist. So something went on in his mind at that point which was interesting to see. It suddenly stopped him being so careful.
But even in the run up to 2000, you can see new elements in his work. A painting called ‘Night’, for example, is so strange. All the different things in the painting are tilted up, slightly strange and out of proportion. Other paintings are about fear and pain. You can see his eyes become more and more terrified. One self-portrait he painted after he came back from Queen Square one time. They’d talked about the fact that they wouldn’t know exactly what was wrong with him until after he died, when they could do a brain autopsy. So when he came home he painted a self-portrait; to one side of the canvas you can see a saw.
Would he have carried on painting if it weren’t for Ron? Who knows. All I know is that he was trying to explain how he felt with the self-portraits.
Dementia and the Arts: Sharing Practice, Developing Understanding and Enhancing Lives
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Dementia and the Arts: Sharing Practice, Developing Understanding and Enhancing Lives
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