Self Portrait of the artist
The painter Doris Wilkinson (1930 -2017) was born in Silsden, the daughter of mother Ellen, and father, James Mitchell Wilkinson, an amateur painter. The family lived at 12 Norton Street, Silsden. She was also grand-daughter to William Scott Wilkinson, a local musician. Her uncle, also William Wilkinson, was also a talented local sculptor.
Doris was educated at Keighley Girl’s Grammar School, then studied at Skipton Art School, where she studied alongside the sculptor and painter, Roy Bell, and painted the portrait of him, circa 1948, shown below.
Roy Bell, painted by Doris Wilkinson, around 1948. Image courtesy of Roy Bell.
Pencil sketch of an unknown woman, circa 1948, by Doris Wilkinson, Skipton Art School
In 1950 Doris won a County Major art scholarship to study painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and was awarded a University of London Diploma in Fine Art. Her time at the Slade was disappointing, as she found that her own painting style was at odds with the modernist tendencies of the Slade tutors at that time. After graduation, and feeling discouraged by her Slade experiences, she fortunately met the Salford artist, L.S. Lowry, who encouraged her to go her own way, ignore the critics, and develop her own painting style regardless of the latest London-centric trends in art.
In 1952, and in the closing stages of her course, and whilst renting a house owned by a professional musician, she met Bruno Schrecker, who was fast gaining recognition as a talented cellist. They married in 1953 and at this time Bruno had won a coveted French Government scholarship to study cello with the celebrated cellist, Pablo Casals. Doris and Bruno travelled widely across Europe, including initially to Prades in France, for a year where Pablo Casals was based, and where Doris painted the landscape of the region.
Bruno Schrecker
In 1955 Doris and Bruno returned to Britain where she studied and gained an art teaching certificate with distinction from London University. She taught art at a primary school in Wimbledon and also began to exhibit her own work, which proved popular with the public. She had begun to experiment with fabric collage, influenced by painters, such as Chagall, Redon, and Picasso, and was encouraged by the Roland, Browse and Delbanco gallery in London, who exhibited her work and introduced her to the curator of the Geffrye Museum (see below).
Her first solo art show was held in the former Keighley museum in Victoria Park in 1957 and in December 1961, Doris exhibited an exhibition of fabric collages at the Geffrye Museum in London, and the following year she exhibited collage artwork in the ‘Collages and Constructions’ Exhibition at the Aldeburgh Festival. Doris subsequently exhibited collages extensively in the UK and overseas, including at the Furneaux Gallery in Wimbledon. In the late 1960s she also was commissioned by the London Hilton Hotel to design and produce 12 huge wall hangings where they adorned the hotel ballroom for 30 years.
In July 1970, Cliffe Castle, Keighley, again exhibited Doris’s collage artwork and she also exhibited again at the Geffrye Museum in 1970, this time working alongside the textile artist, Mary Britten Clarke. The museum published an accompanying guide : ‘Exhibition of Collages & Embroideries’ by Doris Schrecker and Mary Britten Clarke (1970).
‘Water & Rocks’. Collage, with pebbles & string on hessian. Exhibited at the Geffrye Museum in 1970.
In the introduction to the guide, Doris writes of her approach to creating collages:
As far as the ideas for collages are concerned, I have to be stimulated and moved by visual experience, usually something in nature, before I can start on a collage. Technique in the narrow sense does not interest me – I am interested in technique only as a means of expressing what I feel about something. I find I have modified my earlier ideas and become more interested in variety of texture … I feel much freer in my approach than I used to do and foresee a stage in which I move freely from fabric to paint and into three-dimensional objects without inhibition.
However, by the late 1970s, Doris, after a break to raise her family, had began to teach painting at adult education classes, which prompted her to return to painting again herself.
She held a solo exhibition of her paintings at Gregynog Hall, University of Wales in 1982 and was a residential adult education art tutor, leading holiday courses in drawing, painting and embroidery at her own home in Wales.
She returned to Yorkshire in 2001 and worked from her home and studio at West Barn, Conistone, North Yorkshire, using the name ‘Dorie Schrecker’ and painting portraits, still life and landscape scenes, some characterised by their ethereal and dream-like images.
In 2008 she moved to Shrewsbury, where she lived until her death in 2017.
In 2021 the Granary Art Gallery at Weston Park, Shifnal, Shropshire, held an exhibition of her work alongside the visual and sculptural artwork of her sons, Jeremy and Leo.
(With thanks to Jeremy Schrecker, son of Doris Schrecker, for his help with this profile and his permission to use the images shown here).