Stephen Wiltshire – Architectural Artist

April is Autism Awareness Month and with that in mind we have chosen Stephen Wiltshire as our Inspirational DiversityChampion.

Stephen Wiltshire is an architectural artist who at the age of three was diagnosed as autistic.

At school Stephen expressed an interest in drawing and he began to communicate through his art. Teachers encouraged his drawing, and with their aid Stephen learned to speak at the age of five.  At the age of eight, he started drawing imaginary cityscapes and cars and aged 10 he drew a sequence of drawings of London landmarks, one for each letter, that he called a “London Alphabet”.

Stephen only needs to look at a subject once and then he can draw an accurate and detailed picture of it. He frequently draws entire cities from memory, based on double, brief helicopter rides over a city. He produced a detailed drawing of four square miles of London and his longest ever panoramic memory drawing of  Tokyo on a 32.8-foot-long canvas within seven days following a helicopter ride over both cities.

Stephen has been the subject of many TV documentaries, books and articles and in 2006, he was appointed an MBE for services to art.  In September 2006 he opened his permanent gallery in the Royal Opera Arcade, in London and in 2011, he was made an honorary Fellow of the Society of Architectural Illustration (SAI).