Diz Willis

About me:

DIZ WILLIS 29.04.1938-22.06.1999... When I started this site, there was not nearly enough about the late but legendary Diz Willis online. I hadn't checked much here for a while, but whilst updating & checking the web for other bits & pieces, I was staggered to find this almost encyclopedic site: http://server.microlite20.com/451f.org.uk/plastiweb/dizweb/diz/diz.html , which is really now your first port of call, featuring a staggering amount of Diz's art, some writings by & about him and downloads of The Travels of Sir Burton Richards...I am very grateful to Wig for putting it up & would like to think the paucity of this page & my hassling of various of Diz's pals about all this material led them to getting it sorted out...many thanks to them. I'm not quite sure how long its been there, but it's a treasure. I came across the above initially via a link on http://continuo.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/diz-willis-sketches-in-steam/ , which is part of one of those 'sharity' blogs, featuring downloads of tracks from & some excellent info on Sketches In Steam. That's well worth a look too. "He is a true original and one of the artistic touchstones of my life" - Snoo Wilson. Diz was "neurotic about co-ordination & seemed to be concerned merely to be ostentatiously free" - Jeff Nuttall in Ptolemaic Terrascope. I did not know Diz as well as many others, but he stayed at mine once or twice, I saw or was involved with many shows with him & I spent a couple of wonderful afternoons at his lovely place in Sowerby Bridge. These culminated in my buying a painting from him that cosmically connects myself, Diz & the sitter, our mutual friend Milovan Srdenovic of Smell & Quim. I could certainly call him a friend - we shared Gaulloises & gin. His longterm partner Sandy gifted me one of his suits when he sadly died in 1999 & in the pocket was one of the split matchsticks he always used to eat - that was very touching. Diz was a 'scenester' from fifties Soho onwards; a member of the well-known art troupe the Welfare State, the John Bull Puncture Repair Kit performance art group (some of the "pioneers of what became known...as performance art" - Bim Mason), Matchbox Purveyors & Portable Theatre as well as founder of the Anglian Arts Co-Op; on early bills with Genesis P. Orridge in Hull; at art college with Soft Cell & Fad Gadget; a collaborator with Adrian Henri; a performance poet & collaborator with Jeff Nuttall in The Australian Dancers & in Birdyak with Bob Cobbing, Hugh Metcalfe & Lol Coxhill; a player in Snoo Wilson theatrical pieces such as "Lay-By" (1971, Portable Theatre, written with David Hare, Steven Poliakoff et al) at the Open Space Theatre, in Tony Bicat's film "Dinosaur" & in collaboration with characters such as Roland Miller; a regular performer with noise jokers Smell & Quim, as The Colonel & (grudgingly, it seems), at one point a Regional Co-ordinator for the Arts Council. Solo, he came up with classic pieces like the Burton Richards tapes (as a very rough idea for the unitiated, maybe think of Viv Stanshall's Sir Henry stuff?). However, for me, his greatest talent was his paintings, which he showed me a lot of when I visited him in Sowerby. It was wonderful to have all the symbolisms explained, amongst burped exclamations of "Beef!", & I loved how everything was stored skewiff, but delicately touched up if he noticed a scratch or whatever. I took mine away in a toilet-seat box - I've still got both things & they're both treasured! Since then, I've been given some reproductions of some more of his paintings & I have long been meaning to recontact Diz's daughter to ask the fate of the rest of the collection, as Diz was highly underrepresented for exhibitions during his lifetime & since, and talk of a CD ROM sadly never came to fruition. His use of colour was awesome & he had a fine grip on surrealism, symbolism, landscape work, still life etc, but always said the Beano was his biggest influence. Diz, you are fondly remembered. Phil Smith, Blackpool