Kelvin Wilson - archaeological illustrator

23/12/2025

The GoFundMe for my book about the women of the last transport got off to a flying start, but has now settled in a more quiet corner of the internet. The work, however, continues. In recent weeks, I received a newly discovered diary written in (!) the camp, as well as seventeen interviews from a Holocaust archive in the United States. Each one is about three hours long.

Perhaps it helps to sketch out what the work on this book actually entailed…

I spent a dozen days at the National Archives in The Hague, half a dozen at the NIOD in Amsterdam, and twice I was allowed to spend a day sitting next to the archivist at the Westerbork Camp Memorial Center. I also visited the Jewish Knowledge Center, the Rotterdam City Archives, the Royal Library, and the Anne Frank House. In conducted field research in the Polish countryside for two weeks, and spent a week in Karlsruhe, Germany, near the Landesarchiv. A conservative estimate of the number of kilometers I traveled (always by public transport) is close to ten thousand.

I also transcribed several hundred pages from previously unpublished diaries. I had small but precious photographs scanned in high quality. I bought something from a metal detectorist in Lithuania that the women might have themselves made in captivity. I collected three shelves' full of books, sometimes small family publications whose value I could only appreciate through genealogical research.

This same kind of research, through the archives of the Central Bureau for Genealogy or the Ancestry database, allowed me to identify women who later changed their names as people who had been on the same train in 1944. Sometimes I found that they had been interviewed in their new home country, like America. In those cases, I contacted the archive holders and asked permission to listen to their recordings. In one case, I noted that the interviewee said she had slept back-to-back with Anne Frank in Auschwitz, and what she remembered of what the child said…

No, we didn't know this either, they assured me at the Anne Frank House. My systematic processing of every sigh uttered by the more than two hundred people in my research folder has begun to reveal connections that have gone unseen for eighty years.

Meanwhile, I've had the privilege of calling, visiting, or interviewing over one hundred and forty people in at least eight countries. I still maintain regular contact with most of them. If I come across their family member in the margins of someone else's papers, I immediately share it.

Most of it—there is one exception for which I am eternally grateful to the donors, but I'd like to leave private—I did with my own money, in my own time. Every hour and every cent went to this, the story of others. "Why do you do this?" I'm sometimes asked.

Because sometimes you have to dare to give all you have, I reply.

In de nacht van 5 september 1944 stopte een trein in Ausch… Kelvin Wilson needs your support for STEUN MIJN BOEK: "As. De vrouwen van het laatste transport"

04/12/2025

LAST DAY!

I am taking final orders for the art print below, titled 'The Fiancé', till tomorrow, the 4th of December, to get them sent off in time for Christmas. As a special treat, I am adding another image which can also be ordered. Why this one in particular? Because the first giclee print arrived with its new owner, and garnered a first review.

"It is beyond beautiful!", she wrote. You'll have to believe her, I guess.

The prints, on heavy art paper, are 20 by 30 centimeters in size, and are signed and numbered. They cost 40 euros each, inclusive VAT and exclusive 16 euros 50 for tracked and insured postage.

The ink used in giclee prints is of a very deep colour, so whereas the red in "The Fiancé" glows, the black from which "The Linenworker" emerges is like luscious velvet... You'll have to take my word on that :-)

Please PM me for orders!

03/12/2025

ONE MORE DAY LEFT!

I will take final orders for the art print below, titled 'The Fiancé', till tomorrow, the 4th of December, to get them sent off in time for Christmas. I am happy to report there have already been quite a few orders!

The prints, on heavy art paper, are 20 by 30 centimeters in size, and are signed and numbered. They cost 40 euros each, inclusive VAT and exclusive 16 euros 50 for tracked and insured postage.

The ink used in giclee prints is of a very deep colour, so in this painting the red glowed, and the black had the texture of velvet...

Please PM me for orders!

01/12/2025

FOUR MORE DAYS!

I will take orders for the art print below, titled 'The Fiancé', till the 4th of December, to get them sent off in time for Christmas.

The prints, on heavy art paper, are 20 by 30 centimeters in size, and are signed and numbered. They cost 40 euros each, inclusive VAT and exclusive 16 euros 50 for tracked and insured postage.

The ink used in giclee prints is of a very deep colour, so in this painting the red glowed, and the black had the texture of velvet...

Please PM me for orders!

26/11/2025

The first orders of art prints are off. I hope those who are to receive them, enjoy them!

One struck me personally as particularly beautiful, so I have decided to re-issue it! I will take orders for prints till the 4th of December, to get them sent off in time for Christmas.

The prints, on heavy art paper, are 20 by 30 centimeters in size, and are signed and numbered. They cost 40 euros each, inclusive VAT and exclusive 16 euros 50 for tracked and insured postage.

The ink used in giclee prints is of a very deep colour, so in this painting the red glowed, and the black had almost the texture of velvet...

Please pm me for orders.

14/11/2025

This weekend, LAST ORDERS! PRINTS FOR CHRISTMAS!

I am taking orders for art prints. There are three prints available:

THE LINEN WORKER.
This lady from the 7th century may have well been local aristocracy, yet a groove in her teeth showed evidence of time also spent on homecrafts. It suggests she used her mouth to wet the thread she spun into linen.

THE VIKING GIRL.
In the 10th century Dublin was a centre of Viking power, and a port with international connections. Young town women wore, as evidenced by archaeological finds, fancy caps of imported silk.

THE CHIEF.
Though not much remained of the Bronze Age man buried at Lille Dragshøj, in Denmark, those few remains were indeed remarkable. A wooden cup decorated with tiny metal studs marked him as an important man in his community, whereas his preserved scalp of hair… well, it is difficult to say what it meant, but we can see his style was to have a mohawk and mullet. Remarkable, indeed.

The prints are giclees, printed on heavy paper at a size of 20 by 30 centimeters. The price is 40 euros each, plus postage.
To order, please send me your address in a pm, list which print you require, and please state whether you want the print signed (in pencil, at the bottom).

03/11/2025

PRINTS FOR CHRISTMAS

For a short time only, I am taking orders for art prints. There are three prints available:

THE LINEN WORKER.
This lady from the 7th century may have well been local aristocracy, yet a groove in her teeth showed evidence of time also spent on homecrafts. It suggests she used her mouth to wet the thread she spun into linen.

THE VIKING GIRL.
In the 10th century Dublin was a centre of Viking power, and a port with international connections. Young town women wore, as evidenced by archaeological finds, fancy caps of imported silk.

THE CHIEF.
Though not much remained of the Bronze Age man buried at Lille Dragshøj, in Denmark, those few remains were indeed remarkable. A wooden cup decorated with tiny metal studs marked him as an important man in his community, whereas his preserved scalp of hair… well, it is difficult to say what it meant, but we can see his style was to have a mohawk and mullet. Remarkable, indeed.

The prints are giclees, printed on heavy paper at a size of 20 by 30 centimeters. The price is 40 euros each, plus postage.

To order, please send me your address in a pm, list which print you require, and please state whether you want the print signed (in pencil, at the bottom). All orders will be collected and completed on November 14, 2025.

01/11/2025

For the past three years I have done research and this last year, have been writing a book. Yes, it touches on archaeology in places, yes, it certainly is as visually minded as you would expect from me, but the subject is something very different...

In September 1944 the last train to leave Holland for Poland roughly unloaded its cargo of humans onto the platform at Auschwitz. There they were split up. The old and the very young went to one side. A group of women stood on the other side, wondering what was going on...

Those women are the subject of my book, called (in translation) "Ash. The Women of the Last Transport". Their numbers included Anne Frank, as well as some whose survival meant that they later were able to give testimonies as to what they had gone through.

Some left diaries too. Or poems, written behind barbed wire. Indeed, even the lyrics to the songs they made up in their barrack, lamenting their fate and mocking their guards, have been rediscovered.

I am at about three quarters into writing the book of their experiences, non-fiction with plentiful footnotes. The detail is unique, but what sets it even more apart are the visual elements.

Objects which were smuggled into the camps, or crafted there, and taken home after liberation, have suffered by the 80 years since. Yet I am reconstructing them as new. To séé the history indeed says more than a thousand words!

I have also researched, by studying contemporary photographs but also drawings made by inmates, what the camps looked like at the time. What colour were the barracks? Where were their numbers located? What I am gearing up to do, is to paint these scenes--- one of which for the first time ever will show the precise barrack which housed aforementioned Anne Frank.

This is information no-one else has, other researchers confirmed to me. It is quite emotional, again, to séé it.

But what I at present do not have, are the means to continue at the work. As well as it has been going, it remains intense and as always very time-consuming. It has bled me dry.

Therefore, I have started a GoFundMe.... https://gofund.me/55277286f

Please consider supporting this project. Details on the GoFundMe page are in Dutch, but I am happy to send anyone who so requests an English language version!

And oh, what of the link with archaeology? Last Spring I spent several weeks in Poland, every day walking the now overgrown site of the camp where Anne Frank's bunk mates, having been separated from her, spent the last months of the war. I measured the place like an archaeologist would, I prodded to find concrete remains under the soil. And I did find the fence poles inbetween which, once, barbed wire was stretched.

When I pointed them out to the people now living opposite, they, like I, shuddered a little.

In de nacht van 5 september 1944 stopte een trein in Auschwit… Kelvin Wilson needs your support for STEUN MIJN BOEK: "As. De vrouwen van het laatste transport"

19/05/2025

Last week I gave a talk at an archaeological museum on the fashions of Europe's earliest farmers. It was my fourth time to do the same talk, in different countries and multiple languages. So I would like to advertise I am available to do it a fifth, and a sixth, or seventh time...

In the words of the organiser:

"Wow… what an evening!

An inspiring story about fashion in the early Neolithic, told with knowledge, humor and beautiful visuals. It was very special to see the room fill with both professional archaeologists and interested enthusiasts — exactly the meeting of worlds we had in mind.

Afterwards there was an enthusiastic response and the request for a sequel!"

Oh, yeah: despite being an hour and a half, it is a two-parter. For an eight, ninth, or tenth time...

14/04/2025

In the first week of its opening, I can finally show the painting I made for the National Museum of the 80-Year War (Nationaal Museum Tachtigjarige Oorlog), in the town of Groenlo, the Netherlands.

It depicts the final days of the siege of Groenlo, in the summer of 1627, in a manner anyone watching the news today would understand. Property is destroyed, soldiers are traumatised, people must flee-- and the animals left behind howl.

I highly recommend the museum. For as heavy as my painting, the exhibits's final piece, may seem, the museum people have found a lighter way of presenting the story behind it. War may always be a destructive process, a creative museum like theirs will teach us how it avoid it best.

https://www.nmto.nl/

27/03/2025

Recently, Cork University Press published the definite collection of articles by textile historian Elizabeth Wincott Heckett. The hefty volume, "Textiles of Ireland: Archaeology, Craft, Art", was edited by Mary Ann Williams and features illustrations by yours truly.

The selection below shows a cap from Viking-era Dublin; the reconstruction of an Early Medieval woman whose teeth showed evidence of thread working; the set of typical 16th-century Irish clothes found in the castle which is now the home of actor Jeremy Irons; and very touching, the dress found on the body of a 17th-century girl who died in childhood. That dress had been quite well-made out of intricately stitched tubes of cloth, but was a hand-me-down, torn and refit, by time it clothed this girl of a much lower class.

Now she is the star, though.

03/03/2025

I am still here, I really am-- but have been occupied, and still am, with writing a book! I shall not yet disclose what it is about, but instead share the latest of my paintings, made in time between the here where I was and the there I am working towards being!

So, please point your gaze out across the tidal rivers crisscrossing the delta of the northwest European Neolithic, and watch them go, its swampdwelling inhabitants, as they too move from here to there...