Donald Roller Wilson was born on November 23, 1938 in Houston, Texas. His family moved toWichita when Wilson was in fifth-grade. In addition to his classes at the Wichita Art Association, Wilson completed two degrees at Wichita State University and taught classes there.

Wilson was an art professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville from 1967-74, and that is where he continues to live. Wilson was Frank Zappa's visual coordinator during the 1980s and 1990s and produced the cover art for several of Zappa's albums. Wilson uses some unique items in his paintings, such as dogs and cats, chimpanzees, dill pickles, wooden matches, olives, asparagus stalks, and even cigarettes. He paints in oils in very polished realism using the same techniques of the Old Masters.

Exhibitions: Wichita Art Museum, 1966; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, 1969; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1970; LaJolla Museum of Contemporary Art, 1974; Florida State Univ. Fine Arts Gallery, 1979; Mid-America Art Alliance, 1988; Tacoma Art Museum, 1997; Wichita Center for the Arts, 1998; and many more.

Collections: Emprise Bank Collection; Wichita Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum; Chicago Art Institute; Whitney Museum; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; New Orleans Museum; Arkansas Arts Center.

The magical world of oil painter Donald Roller Wilson does not house many people, it is inhabited with a fantastic collection of unusual suspects who, for all their wild, comical, and often mystical eccentricities, remind us with a marked sense of wonder of our own most human desires and foibles. To be introduced into Roller Wilson's magical realm is to be able to honestly say that you have never seen its like; it is, after all, a land of altered scale, clothed animals with multiple personalities, medieval forests, nut farms and visitations from the Virgin Mary in a hovering Cadillac convertible lodged in a pecan treeall blown around by a "strong night wind" in 1938.

To state that the unforgettable and mischievous members of Donald Roller Wilson's menagerie are unique falls feebly short of understatement. Alive with a joyful and playful spirit, the children peer out from their surreal habitats of the canvases with eyes baring their simian, canine, and feline souls, and invite us to share in their reverie. In fact we often catch reflections of ourselves in their eyes. Wilson's bizarre cast of anthropomorphized characters, ranging from single portraits of characters such as Cookie the baby orangutan and Naughty Judy, a cigarette-smoking cat, to elaborately staged tableaux such as the landmark 1974 painting The Man Has Left the Moon Tonight from the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden's collection, explains curator Maia Jalenak from the Louisiana Arts and Science Center.

"Wilson's style prompts comparisons of his work to the Dutch Masters' still-life paintings of everyday objects and magnificent floral arrangements. His paintings are also compared to those of Surrealists René Magritte and Salvador Dali, who were also noted for their realistic depictions of subjects from the realm of dreams. However, Wilson rejects the notion that his work relates to Surrealism. He attributes the olives, cigarette butts, pickles and melon wedges that float through his paintings to a strong night wind that whips through and causes mysterious things to happen," Jalenak continues.

A resident of Fayetteville, Ark., Roller Wilson has recognizable works hung in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn NY; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL; Whitney Museum, New York, NY; Bank of America, San Francisco, CA; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden- Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. as well as numerous corporate and personal collections worldwide.

A Strong Night Wind primarily consists of Roller Wilson's children. "The children are a 'youth group' who represent all of the possibilities of madness in a parallel world to our own. They are a collective refuge where you can get away from the madness of this realm and find insane comfort in their world," explains Roller Wilson from his new studio.

The children of Donald Roller Wilson are an interesting bunch. "Some are bright, some are not. Some are half Jewish, but half Catholic too. All of the children are half boy and half girl. But only in the areas of their mind," explains the artist. If this makes sense to you or intrigues you, then you are starting to perceive the world of Roller Wilson.

Donald Roller Wilson creates his works in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He lives there with his wife Kathleen and a new poodle puppy named Betty. Fayetteville has been Roller's refuge since he taught at the University of Arkansas in the late 1960's. He has just completed a major renovation of his studio there, which houses the many works in progress and the countless props used to exact his magic.

Considering the plethora of objects and characters props and persona in each painting, there is always much more than meets the eye; we are drenched with associations that occur in and out of their contexts. Roller's apes, dogs, cats, house flies, pencils, crowns, are exactly what they appear to be, and then some. He presents the facts, but we fill in the gaps. Each painting presents a complex assortment of information, but we must determine the meaning as a whole.

His narratives provide a "road map" though the maze of joyous information. No matter how one describes Roller, the whimsies, art, fantasy, imagery, and metaphysics add up to a fascinating visual philosophy. "The more you seek to know the answers, the more you realize how much you don't know," Roller says. "As a result, you have to operate blindly on faith. More than anything, my work deals with that pointlessness. It takes all the arrogance out of everything you do when you know that God is so much bigger than you are. And yet everything you are and do and see is filled with God: the trees, the asphalt, and the people fighting over Aqua Net at Wal-Mart. That sounds silly, but silliness is just as important as love, just as important as tragedy. You can make a profound intellectual statement just by basing your efforts on silliness," explains the artist.

Source: Kent Whipple, Art Professional

A resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Donald Roller Wilson is a painter who describes his work as a "by-product of his thoughts." According to him, he spends his "days and nights pondering the meaning of life, the state of the universe, and the Home Shopping Network. . . .More than anything, my work deals with pointlessness. It takes all the arrogance out of everything you do when you know that god is so much bigger than you are. And yet everything you are and do and see is filled with god: the grass, the asphalt, and the people fighting over Aqua net at Wal-Mart. . . .You can make a profound intellectual statement just by basing your efforts on silliness."

His canvases, painted in lush colors in realist style, are inhabited by animals, many of them monkeys, florals, children, and also floating objects such as olives, cigarette butts, pickles, and melon wedges that he attributes, not to a surrealist style, but to a "strong night wind that whips through and causes things to happen."

In the late 1960s, he taught at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and has remained in that town ever since. He is regarded as a local celebrity, and his home and studio are on the local map of "famous residences."

Source:
Kent Whipple, Essay, A Strong Night Wind: The Art of Donald Roller Wilson

Donald Roller Wilson takes his silliness seriously. He's so good at it, in fact, that his paintings make Robin Williams laugh and smile. Robin Williams is a Roller collector; other celebrity clients include Roseanne, Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford, Paul Simon, Elizabeth Taylor, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, Meryl Streep, Carol Burnett, Diane Sawyer, and Carrie Fisher (who wrote the introduction to his book A Strong Night Wind and whose walls are lined with his works). But don't think Roller is about trendy pop culture: He may be a celebrity art darling, but his work is also collected seriously by many major museums and was a critical standout at The Corcoran Gallery of Art's 41st Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting.

Houston born and Fayetteville, Arkansas-based, Roller is a Gothic storyteller with the phenomenal technique and precision of an old master, animating his paintings with finely wrought clothed chimpanzees, dogs, and cats, wooden matches, dill pickles, asparagus stalks, olives, and cigarette butts. He creates characters like Cookie the Baby Orangutan, Jane the Pug Girl, Jack the Jack Russell “Terror,” Loretta the Actress Cat, Miss Dog America, and Patricia the Seeing Eye Dog of Houston.

Each spring from the artist's hyper-vivid imagination into lengthy caption fantasies and onto canvases that require an enormous amount of time to complete, all painted in vivid detail, reminiscent of the 16th century Dutch masters. His oil paintings are explicitly detailed, but unusual. The Washington Post stated “One utterly forgives the painter's self-indulgences for one reason . . . He is technically impeccable.”
Robin Williams describes Roller as Hieronymus Bosch meets P.T Barnum, Faulkner meets Dr. Seuss, and Leakey meets Freud. However you seek to describe him, the whimsies, allegory, fantasy, imagery, and metaphysics add up to a fascinating visual philosophy. “The more you seek to know the answers, the more you realize how much you don't know,” Roller says. “As a result, you have to operate blindly on faith. Even though you’re becoming conscious of the fact that you’ re so small and ignorant, it's kind of comforting to know that you can just go ahead and be small. It gives things a perspective. You might as well just relax and let it happen - there is such a thing as destiny.”

“That doesn't mean you can't elevate yourself in every way, and it's terribly exciting to do that. But at the same time, there's a kind of pointlessness about it. More than anything, my work deals with that pointlessness. It takes all the arrogance out of everything you do when you know that God is so much bigger than you are. And yet everything you are and do and see is filled with God: the trees, the asphalt, the people fighting over Aqua Net at Wal-Mart. That sounds silly, but silliness is just as important as love, just as important as tragedy. You can make a profound intellectual statement just by basing your efforts on silliness.”

Roller Wilson's recognizable works hang in the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL; Whitney Museum, New York, New York; Bank of America, San Francisco, CA; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden- Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC.

1938 Born in Houston, TX
1966–1967 Ass. Professor, Nebraska State College. Peru, Nebraska
1967–1974 Professor, University of Arkansas. Fayetteville, Arkansas
MFA - Kansas State University. Wichita, KS
BA - Kansas State University. Wichita, KS

Donald Roller Wilson (American, b. 1938). Houston born and Fayetteville, Arkansas-based, Roller received his BA and MFA at Kansas State University. He is best known for his vivid portraits of finely clothed animals in an old-master setting. The characters he created include Cookie the Baby Orangutan, Jane the Pug Girl, Jack the Jack Russell “Terror,” Loretta the Actress Cat, Miss Dog America, and Patricia the Seeing Eye Dog of Houston.

His works are both collected by celebrities like Robin Williams, Meryl Streep and Elizabeth Tylor as well as major museums including the Brooklyn Museum, Chicago Art Institute, Whitney Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.