William Oxer

William Oxer




I have been painting professionally for over 25 years, undertaking regular portrait commissions for private clients and producing artworks for art gallery exhibitions. I work mainly with acrylic paints on canvas.

My style can be immediately recognised as romantic and traditional. However, it increasingly carries hidden meaning and complex allusions to mythology, philosophy, or classical and religious iconography. My paintings employ subtle allusions and themes such as 'perfect love' and the notion of passion as expressed in tales such as Troilus and Cressida and Romeo and Juliet.

Previous engagements include creating large-scale painted designs for interior projects in historic houses such as Goodwood House, Buckingham Palace, Petworth House and Hatchlands Park. I have also undertaken many varied projects including period decoration and exhibition design in such places as Christies, St James (William Beckford Exhibition) and the Building of Bath Museum.


At Hatchlands Park in Surrey, I worked with Alec Cobbe, restorer and interiors expert. The experience was something that defined how I wished to work. Living in a country house amongst historic keyboard instruments, producing hand-painted schemes for some of England's finest houses and surrounded by hundreds of beautiful paintings allowed me to think upon my own work, quietly and studiously, in an environment that promoted beauty and rigorous thought.

"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..'. He states that the work 'offers us, in short, a return to the true and serious tradition." Professor Roger Scruton

"William Oxer's paintings represent a strikingly fresh current in contemporary art. His work is experimental, and he is also willing to take on larger themes as well as demonstrating a delight in detail and minutiae. Very few contemporary artists paint so consistently well." Dr David Morley, University of Warwick