Silverpoint drawing by Dylan Waldron

Dylan Waldron, Dulcie, silverpoint

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Gallery


14 October 2015

Dylan Waldron's work Dulcie was accepted into the permanent collection of Birmingham City Art Gallery in February this year.  It is currently the only silverpoint drawing in the gallery's collection. The work is on show at Birmingham City Museum & Art Gallery in the 'Birmingham: its people, its history' Gallery, together with some personal items and a 'soundpost'.

The drawing was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2011, won first prize in the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Annual Prize Exhibition in 2014, and was shown in Leicester Society of Artists Simply Drawing exhibition in January 2015. The drawing is a portrait of the artist's mother-in-law, Dulcie Hillcox.

"The drawing was commissioned by me early in 2010 as a tribute to mom," says Sue Waldron.  "I knew that Dylan would do a very special piece of work. He was very close to her, and she always took a great interest in his artistic life. 

Photograph of Dylan Waldron by Paul Hillcox

Dylan Waldron at the top of the new Central Library, Birmingham.  Photograph: Paul Hillcox ©

As Dylan's work is so precise and painstaking, and mom had good and bad days during her illness, I got my brother Paul involved in the process, as he was was her main carer and a talented and patient photographer. Between us we chose the image that best represented mom on one of her good days, when she was thinking about past times and looking out through her window, sitting in the house in Birmingham where she had lived with her husband Ken Hillcox for 55 years and raised three sons and a daughter. Mom died in the November of that year aged 87, but the portrait had been completed and she got to see it.

Although it was in a special place on our wall at home, I wanted it to be shown, and also to be conserved in a public collection for the future. It seems that Birmingham is the right place for Dulcie to be. The medium of silverpoint very fitting as her father had been a silversmith in the jewellery quarter, just down the road."

To see a larger image, click on the Gallery image of Dulcie below