Charles Williams NEAC RWS CertRAS' work is very like short stories. He tries to cram everything he is thinking about, other paintings old & new, newspaper stories, what he saw on his holidays or when he last went to the shops into each painting.
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Artist Statement
Charles' work is very like short stories. He tries to cram everything he is thinking about, other paintings old and new, newspaper stories, what he saw on his holidays or when he last went to the shops into each painting. Sometimes characters and places evolve; sometimes they just appear and then disappear. The chief studio rule is no sketches, no photos, no studies, nothing. People seem to assume that the paintings come from somewhere, but they are simply a la tête. He cannot be bothered with stopping and fiddling around with those things, or doing that projecting thing.
Method of Working
The work is either in oil paint, watercolour or, recently, acrylic, and he is fascinated by the ways in which each medium dictates the result. For example, in order to develop a watercolour painting the work has to get darker, as watercolour is transparent and you cannot make it lighter. Williams' methodology is, to some extent, determined by the circumstances of his training - 1980s Art Colleges were the site of an ultimately futile battle between Abstract Formalism and figurative, representational ideas, both with their traditions and taboos, and he tries to synthesize them in his work. A keen observational draughtsman, Williams has published two books on working from observation, and several magazine series, but it seems to play little part in the work he exhibits.