Nick Curtis
15.07.10
These remarkable pictures of London, published for the first time in the Evening Standard today, are by Stephen Wiltshire, the artist with autism. The 36-year-old from Maida Vale is famous worldwide for his intricate architectural drawings and city panoramas — often drawn from memory and at great speed — and for his triumph over the neural condition that rendered him incommunicative as a child.
For these pictures Stephen was invited by the City of London Corporation to three locations normally closed to the public: the roof of the 43-storey, residential Cromwell Tower at the Barbican, the Old Bailey and the “battlement†terraces of Tower Bridge.
Stephen is a boyishly handsome, stylish young man with a permanent half-smile on his face. Although some people with autism have problems with social interaction, he is friendly and impeccably polite. From the exposed concrete roof of Cromwell Tower, we can see from Primrose Hill to the Crystal Palace transmitter, Wembley Stadium to the Olympic site. Stephen looks, takes some photographs, then starts sketching at blinding speed with an ordinary HB pencil.
Read in Full:Â http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23856368-views-of-stephen-wiltshires-london.do
Stephen Wiltshire Gallery
The gallery, opposite New Zealand House in Royal Opera Arcade London, shows and sells the works of the autistic savant artist Stephen Wiltshire.
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