Hyde Park Art Center presents Julian Williams: Recent Paintings, a solo exhibition featuring a new series of landscape paintings that traverse a psychological terrain. Known primarily for painting racially-charged portraits in the 1990’s, Julian Williams‘ latest work introduces a major departure from his previous interests. His energy and skilled technique has further developed into enigmatic and unsettling abstractions that captivate our eyes and hold our emotions hostage. Painted from memory and imagination, Williams’ series of paintings present striking yet uncanny landscape scenes that leave the viewer with feelings of both serenity and disquiet. Painted from memory and imagination, Williams’ series of paintings present striking yet uncanny landscape scenes that leave the viewer with feelings of both serenity and disquiet. Void of any trace of human existence, and using a vibrant, and at times unnatural palette, these landscape paintings create a space somewhere between imagination and reality. At one moment the landscapes appear almost plausible, like a desert sunset or lightening within a gathering storm. In the next they appear completely impossible and only imaginable within the wildest dreams of the artist. It is in this liminal space, between imagination and reality, that we find Williams’ new series of landscape paintings.
About Julian Williams
Chicago-based artist Julian Williams received an MFA and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught drawing and painting at Columbia College Chicago, Evanston Art Center, Hyde Park Art Center, and in the Chicago Public Schools. Recent exhibitions of his work have been held around Chicago, including the Open Door Gallery, South Side Community Art Center, Susan Woodson Gallery, and ETA Creative Arts Foundation Gallery. Williams often teaches the Portrait and Figure in Painting and Drawing class at the Hyde Park Art Center.
