“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.”
Professor Sir Roger Scruton (1944-2020)
William has been painting all his life, professionally since 1990. Painting and creating art has been both an internal drive and a gift which has propelled him to create from a very young age. Poetry too is part of his creative output and both writing and painting have always run side by side.
Driven by traditional ideas of how beauty should be represented, William continued forming the intellectual basis to my artistic thought process under the tutelage and continuing friendship of Professor Regius Peter Davidson of Oxford University and also, separately, with friend Sir Professor Roger Scruton, who sadly passed away a few years ago.
After graduating with Honours, William was immediately offered a place at the Prince of Wales' Institute of Architecture. However, he was advised by them to take instead the role offered to him by Alec Cobbe, artist, restorer and collector, as his assistant.
Living in at Hatchlands Park, Surrey where The Cobbe Collection is based, William helped with various projects. These included painting stanchions and lighting for the Liverpool Art Gallery, designing handmade cards, working as bidder and buyer for clients at Christies and Sothebys for country house/stately home owners and many other roles. He helped too, with an exhibition for the Queens Gallery, Buckingham Palace.
He worked also on large-scale designs for interiors in historic houses such as Goodwood House and Petworth House. William then went on to work with clients on private Country House period decoration in places such as Wilton and Cathedral Close, Salisbury.
As well as continuing to paint, William worked in other areas, such as museum and exhibition design. This included creating the backdrop and stage for the William Beckford Exhibition at Christie’s, St James London and also the Building of Bath Museum, also known as The Museum of Bath Architecture, facilitated by Jesca Verdon-Smith and Sophie Scruton.
Throughout these years, William has continued to paint and show and sell his work to an increasing number of collectors. He also works with charities and where possible produces works to auction. A commission was auctioned at The Palace Of Versailles in May 2022 at the Royal Versailles Ball. Prior to this, the painting was shown at a Reception at the British Ambassador's Residence in Paris. This is in the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré, furnished with masterpieces of French Empire furniture and decorative arts, English silver, and paintings by British artists.
William’s next London exhibition is in December 2024 at 54 The Gallery, Shepherds Market, Mayfair. He is also to show work at a new gallery in Camden, London, in April. As well as commissions for clients, William’s artworks are shown in exhibitions and bought by collectors across the world. Recently his works have been featured on electronic advertising billboards in London, including Waterloo Station.
Sir Professor Roger Scruton, (1944-2020) the writer and philosopher who also made a television documentary in 2009 entitled ‘Why Beauty Matters’, said: “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.”
In 2017 William was approached by the RSA and subsequently awarded the title of 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.
William writes, '“I am perhaps something of an old soul. I might describe my works are restful and somehow quiet, demure, elegaic. I enjoy all seasons in England, but perhaps the evenings of autumn and winter by the fire induce the most reflective work, painting smaller, more intimate pieces, although in the past few years I have enjoyed working on a much larger scale.
“With a penchant for the gentler, quieter sensations of life; of the heart, of sensuous feeling, passionate yet gentle and demure, deep and unspoken, my work has always seemed to have been the echo of those ideals. Where much can be loud, brash and demanding in contemporary art, I have stuck to what I see of life’s lense and perhaps an unfashionable form - beauty from within, the art communicating feelings to the viewer's very soul that will never need to be put into words.”
William lives and works in an old Rectory in the Cotswolds countryside, with his fiancée Elizabeth, daughter Abigail and their five dogs.