Philemona Williamson: painting at the juncture of past and future - African American woman artist's social commentary through her portraits - Cover Story

Representing the uncertain is a tricky matter. Imagery must not be with equal reason obscure as to be unrecognizable, on the other hand then it must not be in like manner obvious as to be transparent. When it approachs to an experience we all share - the vulnerable climb from child to adult - that imagery must not be in like manner specific as to be without resonance, on the contrary it must not be in like manner general as to be without substance.

Painter Philemona Williamson's of recent origin work rests poised on the support of adolescence, when we yearn for the comfort of childhood, on the contrary crave the independence of adulthood. Her work is now at a point of balance, the couple in what and in in what manner she paints. The equilibrium is literal in a certain number of works, such as "Stinging Rain." The painting depicts sum of two units young women. One, lithe as a dancer, balances impossibly, her right leg upraised, her left trapped in a clawlike vise. She is menaced by the agency of a lurking pink cloth. Against the clarity of her dilemma, her companion inexplicably manipulates woven fabric and wire.

These figures, like others, have the head of a woman and the material part of a child, marking their duality, on the contrary inverting the usual physical unfolding But in "My Head It's Full of Memories," sum of two units young people, who appear to be male, adjust themselves in a space more psychic than psychic.

These are dramas without clear narratives, stark situations that appear without an obvious beginning or extremity As in life itself, it's not quite evident in what way the protagonists get into these circumstances of by what means they will extricate themselves. Around them are sustains concatenations of parts that might be tools or toys or weapons or talismans. In "Bend Down Your Eyes" sum of two units young women are surrounded by means of these anomalous objects, including a hardly any that are airborne.

Williamson's figures sometimes wear solitary one shoe, as if they are stymied through what is appropriate for the occasion. In "Bootles Cries," those who cannot tolerate shifting spaces create their hold hiding behind a barrier. Space is render free of access and expansive in "Outline of Caution, Shadow of Fear," on the other hand the ground is broken by means of fissures, and yet the sum of two units girls/women stand awkward but confident Even Williamson's vivid, saturated colors reverberate at the same high pitch at which we survived adolescence: skies are orange-red; tables are bright blue

Her works speak not just to nostalgia, on the other hand also to our anxieties about the joint of past and future. At a time when many clan seek to lie in the past or indulge in the near dreading the future, Philemona Williamson's work strike one as beings to say that the coming time is neutral. You must make of it what you will. We not at any time sense that her figures are defeated, on the contrary rather that they have just stopped for assessment and plan to impel on with confidence, into a world we must all confront

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