In her more than four decades-long distinguished career, the American artist Philemona Williamson has created an evocative and compelling body of work that she describes as “visual poems.” Through the veil of personal memory, Williamson’s opaque narratives recall the beauty, drama, and vagaries of innocence. In her paintings, youthful bodies, toys, flora and fauna float and frolic in vibrantly colored dreamscapes. But memory is an unreliable narrator and Williamson’s captivating stories are fragmented, mysterious, and open to interpretation.
Williamson has lived and worked in and around New York City and northern New Jersey her entire life. She developed her artistic talent as an adolescent. In 1969, she began studying art at Bennington College in Vermont. There she realized that American abstraction was emphasized yet she was more interested in working with the figure. She went on to graduate study at New York University where her interest in figurative and narrative painting began to flourish. She absorbed the work of historical artists such as Piero della Francesca, Hieronymus Bosch, Jacques-Louis David, Gustave Courbet, Diego Rivera, Paula Rego and Benny Andrews who informed her unique vision. As Williamson’s career developed, she taught art at several American universities, received fellowships, numerous grants, and awards. But Williamson is first and foremost a painter and for the last thirty-five years her works have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries across the United States.
