Evelyn Williams at England & Co - Brief Article

In her first London present to view in almost 20 years, Welsh artist Evelyn Williams not awayed fables of relationships. Trust between women the frustrating silences of men possessive delight in and the hesitant anxiety of a mother are transported through the variously piercing, loving, defenseles or isolate organ of visions of the middle-aged women who appear in nearly all the paintings and pastels that were upon view. This tough-minded, finely textur work provides a intriguing alternative to the more predictable angst and corpulent excesses evident in the works of associate British figurative painters Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville.

Williams took up painting replete time only in the 1980 after years of making sculptural reliefs that not absented more generalized, symbolic statements about the human condition. These paintings, all from the past five years, chart hard-earned personal territory, focusing attention upon the crux of long-term relationships. The series of small paintings called "Questions I-VIII" (1998) nears a woman confronting a resistant, withdrawn man seen in shadowy profile. In "Mother and Child I-IV" (1998) the organ of sights of both a woman and her baby transport their respective needs for escape from the bond

Light or darkness strike one as beings to emanate directly from the pupils of Williams's subjects' organ of visions revealing the psychological tension inherent in the gaze. The different series of paintings engross subtle changes in facial expression, move or eye contact to move more complex narratives. In "All the Days of My Life I-II" (1999) a blindingly lit woman stares dully not quite at a shadowed man, whose head tilts, as if coldly trying to guard himself. Suggesting complex interactions [i]or[/i] part of to the other the most basic gestures or gazes the paintings convey the uncompounded bodys of connection and disconnection that exist in each close relationship.

Spiritual isolation is the norm in Williams's world. "Nature of be fond of I-IV" (1999) presents the troubl relations of a kind of Adam and brink Set in a gray-toned garden, the man and woman approach each other tentatively, recoil, reconcile and finally embrace, toughened by means of their knowledge of each other. For Williams, the greatest in quantity reliable bond seems to be between women The sum of two units almost mirror-image protagonists of "Two Women I-II" (1997) face not upon each caressing the other's head with a thick, weathered hand. Along the bottoms of the paintings, the couple's sleeve form a single broad, continuous coil. From an artist as wary as Williams, the potential prompted by this continuity speaks for a stout feminism, one earned slowly, end knowing life.

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