Gordon Williamson

About the Artist

Gordon Williamson works with his life and professional partner as part of Divine Glass Design. Neither partner have any formal artistic training but came to develop an interest in glass art when they purchased an old country church to restore – initially so they could get married in a church!

Whilst learning about historical stained glass and restoration in Australia and overseas, they discovered the long history of warm glass art – primarily fused and slumped glass. Whilst his partner has focussed on traditional stained glass art, Gordon has explored the potential of warm glass.

Their design studio is located in the country church – providing a basis of spirituality, peace, solidity and inner harmony to their work.

In 2002, Gordon retired from the senior executive of the public sector to focus on developing his art on a full time basis. In 2003, his partner also retired and joined in him in this endeavour.

Since that time, Gordon and his partner have developed a wide range of quality fused and slumped glass, and leadlight products, which make an appropriate intersection between high quality, great design and reasonable price. These items are available through their website at www.divineglass.com.au.  Gordon’s experimental work – whilst deeply rooted in religious and other iconography - attempts to explore the limitations of warm glass art. His current experimentation/learning is all about viscosity in slumping, i.e. some glasses moved much quicker and further than others - which adds interesting distortion.  His latest experimental work is about combining casting with slumping in the same piece – making a cast object and have some part of it slump – and manipulating the size and shape via temperature control.  Previously he has worked with trapping air in slumped pieces to make organic forms in the glass; casting found objects; creating flat art with glass; as wells as exploring metallic and other inclusions.  In 2004, Gordon was champion in the Professional Glass category at the Royal Canberra Show.