Wendy Williams
Drawing, painting and ceramics form the artistic base for Troy, NY native, Wendy Williams. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ms Williams began exhibiting across the Northeast United States beginning at the Cutler-Stavaridis Gallery in Boston, MA and has been the recipient of several grants through the years, including the Elizabeth Foundation and Yaddo. Collections of her work include The Albany Institute of History and Art, University at Albany and several private corporations. Her teaching credentials include Sage College and the Harmanus Bleecker library, both in Albany, NY. In the late 80’s, Williams returned to the Albany area to enroll in graduate school to become a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Today, Williams simultaneously embraces her inexorable tie to the arts and her work with individuals with addictions and mental health issues.
Artist Statement
“The universes that are amenable to the intellect can never satisfy the instincts of the heart.” (The Cloud of Unknowing- Anonymous work of Christian Mysticism written in the Middle Ages)
My discourse with the painting process takes place in the middle of this theatre of thought and then action. The science of nature, the sense that is formed by understanding and knowing the why of an image or fact seems to fuel the position of complete loss and lost and found. Rooted in biology and botany, nature and gesture as well as conscious and unconscious perception, the baseline for start and finish in the visual dialogue of making a picture lies well beyond my ability to rationalize form and structure. Form and structure are not given by knowing but by exploring the realm of the infinite and finite meeting. Words express this conundrum more explicitly, as in a title if I am so lucky to have landed on one -The wedding of language and image and all that lies between. There is a constant dialectical shift between a graphic representation of energy and form with something unspoken, unseen, sometimes wonderful and sometimes dark and hard.