Jason Wilsher-Mills
Following the success of the blogging workshop in 2014, it’s time to take it a step further and get creative on your iPad in school with Jason Wilsher-Mills
Art has always played a pivotal role in his life and as a child he remembers being asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. The answer was ‘to play for Wakefield Trinity or be an artist’.
His rugby dreams were curtailed due to illness as an 11 year old, which caused him to be paralysed from the neck down for 5 years. Throughout this time of complete paralysis he attended a special school and painted with a specially designed ‘mouthpiece’. When he was 16 he regained his mobility, as his condition had gone into remission.
He studied painting at Cardiff ULWC, and graduated in 1992. After graduating he qualified as a teacher, working full time as an art teacher at HMP Leeds, where his department won the prestigious Jerwood Community Arts Award in 2003.
After a career as Head of the Art, Media & Performing Arts Department, in 2003 he again became ill, with the same degenerative neurological condition.
In the years since graduating, he had subsequently put his artistic life on pause, due to focusing on family and his teaching career.
December 2011 saw Jason purchase an iPad after much soul searching and research into what would be the best way to start making art again. David Hockney had seemingly made making art on an iPad ‘legitimate’.
This purchase was a pivotal moment for him as it caused a change in career, due to becoming ill that subsequently caused him to be in a wheelchair, deciding to take the ‘plunge’ of following his first love by becoming a full time artist.
Since then he has exhibited his work worldwide and is highly sought after to work in schools and colleges, as well as being short-listed for the prestigious Culture Cloud Finalists in July 2012.
The recipient of two Arts Council England grants in 2012, for iPad community workshops in the East Midlands, with the National Centre for Craft & Design, and for Wakefield Wildcats Community Trust Artist in Residence, which will see him creating a 60 metre mural, depicting the history of the club, on a truly innovative piece of public art.
Some recent and upcoming projects include:
‘Ilham’ exhibition Museum of Islamic Art Doha, Qatar – March 2015
‘Road to Freedom’ Houses of Parliament Banner Project, Jan-Nov 2015
‘Sleaford Remembers’ WW1 digital arts project, Sleaford Nov 2015
SHAPE Arts residency September 2014
“Not too Shoddy’ Ossett March 2014