John Willats | |
---|---|
Occupation(s) | Psychologist, Sculptor |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Royal College of Art |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Loughborough University
University of Birmingham Polytechnic of East London |
John Willats (died April 2006)[1] was a psychologist and artist known for his research on pictorial systems of depiction and perspective, which included a taxonomy of the methods of visual projection used by various artists.[2] He was considered an expert on children's drawings and how children develop drawing abilities.[3]
Willats studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art. He had degrees in mechanical sciences and psychology. He worked under the supervision of Richard Wollheim at London University.[4] He was teaching sculpture and drawing at Walthamstow School of Art when along with Fred Dubery, he published his first book, Drawing Systems[5] Willats was an Honorary Research Fellow at the Polytechnic of East London[6] and was an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Birmingham.[7] He was a professor at Loughborough University.
In 2000, Willats completed a sculpture celebrating the millennium in a former hometown of Bradford-on-Avon, England. The sculpture is a life-sized representation of a mill girl, known as "Millie", that celebrates the town's history.[8]
In Perspective and other drawing systems (1983), Willats and Dubery defined formal categories for pictorial systems, which they called projection systems.[9][10] Willats posited that people have an innate capability to understand the grammar of pictorial depictions, which is related to Chomsky's theory of universal grammar.[11] In Making sense of children's drawings, Willats proposed that children learn drawing in a manner comparable to language learning, by picking up increasingly complex rules of depiction.[5]