FIGURE AND GROUND by CHARLES WILLIAMS

Charles Williams’ work is characterised by a continual questioning of the nature and indeed the point of painting. In the past this has led to an abandonment of the medium in favour of three dimensions; his written work on technique could also be seen as a way of stepping out and looking in at an activity which is continually fascinating to him. This searching is evident in his refusal to ‘settle’; large, complex works are succeeded by small, simple ones, oil paintings by watercolour. Methodologies are examined, tested and proceeded from, often in the same painting. His unwillingness to use external reference material, photography, even his own sketches or notes in the studio reflects an early engagement with nineteen-seventies Abstract Formalist ideas about the integrity of the image and the painting as a record of an action or activity, and this seems to be avconstant. On the other hand the focus of the work shifts across genres - still-life, figure composition, portrait, landscape, all the ‘traditional’ types of painting are examined; Williams is anvartist unwilling to let anything go, to turn his back on any of the seemingly endless possibilities in painting. Simplicity, even naivety may seem to result, but closer examination will show that Art history informs the work as much as Art Now - it’s not uncommon to spot references from Imperial Rome, mid-century Expressionism and YBA in the same painting.

“In my work the surface of the painting is the arena on which all activity takes place. Figures sink into the ground, emerge re-formed, and dissolve again in a constant cycle. I am never sure of what the search is for; sometimes I am telling stories, sometimes caricaturing, imitating, mocking, sometimes simply balancing form against form, sometimes trying to unbalance them. The process is not satisfying in itself - I am not a machine - but it’s all the other stuff that crowds in that makes it exciting. Where do I put it? How?”

Biography

He was born in Evanston, Illinois, USA, and raised in England. He was educated at Kent College in Canterbury, Maidstone College of Art and the Royal Academy, London, where in 1992 he won the top prize for painting as well as the prize for anatomical drawing. In 1996, he was elected to the New English Art Club (NEAC) of which he is now a committee member and with whom he regularly exhibits in the Mall Galleries in London. He has shown in London galleries since 1992, and in 2004 he had a solo exhibition at the Bakersfield Museum Of Art in California, as well as showing in many major competitive exhibitions in London, the UK and abroad, including the Threadneedle Prize for figurative painting, the Marmite Prize and the Hunting Prize. He is also a member of the RWS. In 1999, along with fellow artist Eamon Everall, he became one of the 12 original founder members of Stuckism, the radical anti-conceptual art movement. Williams exhibited regularly with the Stuckists, was a joint winner of their Real Turner Prize 2002, and was a featured artist in the major show, The Stuckists Punk Victorian, at the Walker Art Gallery, during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.

Williams’ paintings use a narrative content to give a sense of the wider concerns of his subjects. His book, Basic Drawing (pub. Robert Hale), summing up his teaching methods, was published in September 2011, and the follow-up, “Basic Watercolour” is expected in 2014. WIlliams teaches in the Painting School of Canterbury Christchurch University Fine and Applied Art

degree course in his native Canterbury.