More than 30 years ago, Scottish actor Kara Wilson was asked to paint live at the opening of a friend’s new art gallery in Leith — an invitation she leapt at without hesitation.
Best known for her role in the 1980s TV series Grange Hill, Wilson took up painting while pregnant with her daughter, Nina Conti, who is also a performer. She recalled how the idea came about through her friendship with Jan Morrison, who opened the Leith Gallery and suggested Wilson paint live at the opening, believing the smell of oil paint alone might draw in visitors.
It was during that experience, Wilson said, that she realised she was more of an actress than a painter — noting that people gathered to watch her work, and that she found she actually painted better with an audience present.
That realisation sparked a whole series of plays centred on the lives of female painters, in which Wilson takes on the persona of each artist while painting one of their works live on stage. The first, based on the life of Glasgow Girl artist Bessie McNichol, was written in 1997 and performed at the Leith Gallery during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Wilson said she has continued seeking out women painters with compelling stories ever since.
This year, Wilson — who is married to actor Tom Conti — is preparing to perform her sixth “painter play” at the Fringe, this time exploring the life of northern English “naive” painter Helen Bradley, who didn’t gain recognition for her art until she was in her sixties. Wilson has previously portrayed artists including Tamara de Lempicka, Vanessa Bell, Beryl Cook and Angelica Kauffman.
Before writing each play, Wilson makes a point of contacting family members of the painter in question to seek their blessing. In Bradley’s case, she managed to track down the artist’s granddaughter through Ancestry.com and was relieved to find she welcomed the idea enthusiastically.
To prepare for the role, Wilson watched documentaries featuring Bradley in order to capture her personality, describing her as a chatty Lancashire lady whose every remark carries a natural humour. In the play, Bradley is depicted visiting an art club, a setting that allows Wilson to address the audience directly as though they were fellow club members eager to hear her story, arriving on stage mid-conversation with a cup of tea in hand.
Wilson has prepared 25 canvases for this year’s run, using one per performance. Each must already carry the initial drawing and a dark background before she takes the stage. While Bradley was known for crowded paintings featuring hundreds of figures, Wilson has chosen a later, sparser work featuring just four figures for this production. The audience sees nothing until each character gradually emerges on canvas, with Wilson narrating each figure’s story as it takes shape — all while racing to complete the painting within the hour-long show.
