The great brand new – Birmingham Post
An exhibition by artist Stephen Wiltshire is being held in Brimingham to mark World Autism Day tomorrow. The artist first visited Birmingham when he leapt to national celebrity as a 12-year-old with autism and showed a phenomenal ability to draw architecture. He returned this week for the exhibition showing at The Mailbox until Sunday.
It includes a new drawing of the Birmingham skyline, catching up with recent additions such as Selfridges and the Beetham Tower, on show alongside dozens of images of London, New York and other locations.
There is a drawing of St Pancras Station, now given a new lease of iconic life as the Eurostar terminal, which Stephen – astonishingly – produced from memory 20 years after he first drew it.
But while he copes effortlessly with the complexities of neo-Gothic, his own taste is for more modern styles of architecture. 'I love the new skyline, the tall buildings,' he says. 'I love the drawing the skyscrapers at Canary Wharf in London, and I've been to lots of places in America – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco. He adds the he is looking forward to drawing Renzo Piano's London Bridge Tower, alias the Shard of Glass, which will be Europe's tallest building.
Stephen, now aged 34, is a painter as well as a draughtsman, and seems to be as much at home with oil paint as he is with a pen.
The exhibition shows his passion for London's red double-decker buses and New York's yellow taxis in both media.
Asked if there were still places he would like to visit in his drawings and paintings, he unhesitatingly named Dallas, Houston and Malaysia.