Memory Attic shoppers can’t get enough from The Rolling Stones.
We recently sold out a one-of-a-kind album display. We have an amazing Rock Guitar Legends Photo Collage, signed by the most influential musicians in the world, including Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones.
But Wood is much more than a musician. He’s also an artist and an art gallery owner!
Ronnie Wood’s Art Career
Ronnie Wood is an English rock musician in The Rolling Stones who is also a painter. When he was a child he won a BBC art contest and went on to train at art school like his older brothers. Even though he is a member of a world-famous rock and roll band, Wood refers to himself as “an artist of the visual kind first.”
His paintings of his fellow band members and other performers are quite well known, but less known are Wood’s paintings of landscapes and animals. He works in a variety of media and has shown in galleries around the world, including the one he owns in London.
Wood’s story is not unique among multipotentialite artists. He didn’t start selling and exhibiting his work until the 1980s, even though he had lifelong ambitions to be an artist. He’d always seen value in both vocal and visual expression, saying “Both art and music hold their position in my life. They bounce off one another and make me the person I am.” It’s often difficult for celebrities to transition into other fields, such as from vocal performance to acting or vice versa. Wood ran into the same challenge while trying to establish a name for himself as an artist, and not just a Stones member.
But his art spoke for itself. From watercolors to acrylics, Ronnie Wood’s oeuvre contains a diversity of materials and moods. The consistency is in the vibrancy and liminality of the paintings. True, Wood did have the advantage of having access to intimate band rehearsals, which he sketched and doodled and then sold as an art book.
However, his joy is palpable in every work of art and that’s what made him an artist in his own right. Keith Richards observed, “He paints because he loves it, his joy shows in everything he does.”