William Kent’s Collection:
- Ascension – sculpture comprised of 5 marble plinths.
- Aurelian Rhapsody – 1800 x 700 mm figurative painting.
- Beautiful Noise – 3 x 1100 x 1100 mm abstract triptych.
- BlinkScape – 2400 x 1530 mm abstract painting.
- Confluence – 1100 x 1100 mm abstract painting.
- Emergence – 1600 x 525 mm abstract painting.
- Genesis – sculpture comprised of 5 timber plinths.
- Inner Sanctum – 1100 x 1100 mm abstract painting.
- Labyrinthine Sol – 2400 x 1530 mm abstract painting.
- Mosaic Nu – 3800 x 1700 mm figurative abstract painting.
- Primary Pulse – 1100 x 1100 mm abstract painting.
- Relative Motion – 2 x 1100 x 1100 mm abstract diptych.
- Shared Ground – 1100 x 1100 mm abstract assemblage.
- Still Life Interrupted – 1100 x 1100 mm abstract assemblage.
Bio:
Born in Melbourne in 1951, William’s artistic journey began not in a classroom, but in the rich, loamy soil of the Dandenong Ranges. Guided by instinct and a passion for found objects, his teenage years were a crucible of experimentation, forging a DIY ethos that would define a lifetime of creation.
Rejecting the ephemeral nature of traditional canvas, William pioneered a brutalist aesthetic, favoring coarse hessian stretched over marine ply. This unforgiving substrate, born from early experiments with discarded shade cloth, became his enduring signature—a choice that imbues each work with a raw, tactile intensity and structural permanence.
Lacking the financial backing for formal art school, William chose the discipline of screen printing stencil preparation. His talent was undeniable, earning him consistent accolades at the Melbourne College of Printing and Graphic Arts and culminating in the prestigious College Prize. This led to a journeyman’s course that provided a holistic, master-class understanding of the entire printing trade—from ink formulation to advertising design.
Achieving mastery bred dissatisfaction. Overqualified for the rigidity of the industry, William pivoted, identifying a burgeoning niche in children’s fashion. He launched his own screen printing company to meet the explosive demand, only to see the entire sector decimated by sweeping tariff reforms. Undeterred by this economic devastation, he relocated to Sydney, trading the ruins of manufacturing for the dynamic world of visual display and event production.
In Sydney, William founded his own display service, becoming the go-to problem-solver for clients facing impossible deadlines. His expertise became legendary, from orchestrating the rapid set-changes for the inaugural Fashion Week to last-minute props for television and film. This work demanded an encyclopedic knowledge of materials and an iron-clad composure, serving major museums, international expos, and national events with unwavering reliability.
Immersed in the arts community, William recognized the nascent potential of the Internet for promotion but foresaw its greatest vulnerability: plagiarism. In 1998, driven to protect creators, he developed and deployed the first-ever copy protection solutions for web content. This innovation was not a mere side project but the genesis of ArtistScope, a company whose robust security systems for images, PDFs, and videos remain the global benchmark, managed by William to this day.
That same year, William launched the International Art Contest, a groundbreaking online event connecting artists globally. Its uniqueness lay not only in its international scope but in its democratic judging process, where winners in categories like Realism and Mixed Media were chosen by peer vote, free from sponsor or jury influence. For fourteen years, until its closure in 2012 due to domain hijacking and server failures, it stood as a revered, artist-centric institution.
In 2017, William retreated to a rural acreage, establishing a new workshop and studio dedicated solely to non-commercial art. This private gallery, now housing his most recent paintings and sculptures, is documented online at joy-of-art.studio —a digital window into a world of personal, uncompromising creation.
Now, William channels his fifty-plus years of commercial artistry into a singular, personal vision. He is currently preparing a major traveling exhibition, a bold statement in monochrome. Featuring twenty large-scale, white-on-white panels—including the triptych ‘Plagiarism’ and the six-meter panorama ‘The Rhythm of Life’—the show is a quiet revolt against visual noise. It is a testament to a life spent mastering not just the art of creation, but the very foundations upon which it is built.
Favoured Media:
William works with a variety of media and ‘found objects’.
However, for William, the act of creation begins long before the first stroke of paint. It resides in the very preparation of the canvas, a process he regards as integral to the final work as the image itself. Rejecting the sterile, factory-made canvases that flood the market, he instead constructs his own substrates from raw, unforgiving materials—usually coarse hessian stretched over framed marine ply.
Consequently, his ‘canvasses’ are not sterile vessels, waiting to be filled. They are already artifacts, carrying the scars and intentions of their creation. Each panel, each irregularity in the weave of the hessian, each layer of painstakingly applied primer—they are the foundational brushstrokes.
Plagiarism:
More than 90% of all web content has been plagiarised. Competitors plagiarism the research and developments of their competitors and so do artists. In fact most artists are influenced by the work of the others and strive to copy their work, their style and even their philosophy – without ‘plagiarism’ their work would be nothing and they would be empty vessels. For more info see Plagiarism
Although ‘Commercial Art’ is all about plagiarism, all of William’s creations since retiring have been original – not all worked out as well as intended, but nontheless they are all 100% original!