{"id":2,"date":"2010-01-11T16:27:15","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T05:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2016-02-16T09:20:27","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T22:20:27","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wepidgeon.com\/pidgeonpost\/?page_id=2","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

This site has been set up to promote awareness of the 20th Century Australian artist, William Edwin Pidgeon, aka “Wep”.<\/p>\n

\"Bill
Bill Pidgeon (Wep) at the entrance to underneath his home at 85 Northwood Road where he kept his pottery wheel and kiln; Jan 1969<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bill Pidgeon’s career spanned from the late 1920s through to the 1970s.\u00a0 He started out in the newspaper industry and quickly forged a name in the local Sydney Press, known as “Wep”. In 1933 he helped create the dummy for The Australian Women’s Weekly<\/em> with his friend and the magazine’s first editor, George Warnecke.\u00a0 Working for\u00a0Consolidated Press he became well known throughout Australia for his political cartoons, comic strips, illustrations and his covers for The Australian Women’s Weekly<\/em>, which are now collectables today.\u00a0 However, Bill’s true passion was his painting and in January 1949 he resigned from Consolidated Press to concentrate on painting and earn an income from commisioned portraits.\u00a0 He ultimately went on to win Australia’s most prestigious prize for portraiture, The Archibald Prize, on three occassions. Only 5 other artists have exceeded this record, which he shares with Clifton Pugh. However\u00a0his earlier\u00a0career always overshadowed the success of his painting with headlines such as “Cartoonist wins Archibald.”<\/p>\n

In 1956 he was diagnosed with glaucoma in both eyes and underwent a total of 6\u00a0operations on his eyes to remove cataracts and ultimately the eye lenses.\u00a0\u00a0By the 1970s\u00a0he was deemd to be legally blind.\u00a0 The difficulties he faced with his eyesight were always kept very private for fear of losing valuable commissions.<\/p>\n

Bill was never a commercial artist. He painted for the love of it and would rather give his works away than sell them.\u00a0 He never had a solo exhibition and only participated in a handful of group exhibitions.\u00a0 Consequently, not many works have changed hands and since his death; awareness of his name has slipped from the visibility of the\u00a0modern art world.<\/p>\n

Through this\u00a0site and links to other sites I aim to\u00a0promote a new awareness and appreciation\u00a0of the works and variety of talent of one of Australia’s greatest 20th Century artists.<\/p>\n

Peter Pidgeon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This site has been set up to promote awareness of the 20th Century Australian artist, William Edwin Pidgeon, aka “Wep”. Bill Pidgeon’s career spanned from the late 1920s through to the 1970s.\u00a0 He started out in the newspaper industry and quickly forged a name in the local Sydney Press, known as “Wep”. In 1933 he … <\/p>\n

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