Emma J Williams
Working mainly in oils, pencil and collage I produce paintings and drawings that capture the landscapes I have visited or lived in. The work I make takes imagery and inspiration from places visited, local landscapes, collected maps, aerial views, trees, plants and walks. I am interested in combining real location with fragments of maps, playing with the idea of merging physical landscape and flat space within the artwork - morphing real places and imagined worlds. Paintings of lone trees in landscapes merge a web like form onto the surface hinting at man-made or underground networks. Earlier paintings involved manipulating paper maps and reducing cartographic elements, offering new and contorted views and creating a sense of place that is both distorted and familiar. Drawings refer to both the man-made and the organic by combining trees, leaves and maps together and references are also made through depictions of pulsating roads and growths of cities that mimic organisms on macroscopic and microscopic levels. Using maps and trees as my main inspiration, I create new and contorted views of the landscape where real places and imagined worlds merge. Mapping these new landscapes back onto canvas and paper, I seek to question our ongoing connection and interaction with nature and our surroundings.
Emma is an artist living and working in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire. She is a member of the Bucks Art Society and the Buckinghamshire Visual Images Group where she participates in Bucks Art Weeks opening her studio to the public. She also teaches art and well-being at Bucks Adult Learning.
Emma studied painting at the Royal College of Art, London and Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design.
Group exhibitions:
2024 Longwick Art Show, Bucks; Pop-Up Art Weekend, Chilterns Neuro Centre, Wendover;
2023 Bucks Art Society Autumn Exhibition, Buckingham Community Centre; Summer Collection, Obsidian Art, Stoke Mandeville; Discover Bucks Museum Open, Aylesbury; Bucks Art Society Spring Exhibition, Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield; Swire Ridgeway Arts Prize, Uffington; Longwick Art Show, Bucks.
2022 Bucks Art Society Autumn Exhibition, Buckingham Community Centre; Art in the Park, Princes Risborough; Bucks Art Weeks, Princes Risborough; Bucks Art Society Spring Exhibition, Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield; Bledow Art Exhibition, Bledlow, Bucks; Chilterns Landscapes Art Exhibition, Wycombe Museum, High Wycombe; Longwick Art Show, Longwick, Bucks.
2021 Bucks Art Society Autumn Exhibition, Fitzwilliams Centre, Beaconsfield; Autumn Collection, Obsidian Art, Stoke Mandeville, Bucks; Art in the Park, Princes Risborough; Directions, Springup Gallery, Online exhibition; Swire Ridgeway Arts Prize, Online exhibition; Buckinghamshire Art Society Centenary Exhibition, Bucks County Museum, Aylesbury.
2020 Art in the Park, Princes Risborough; Longwick Art Show, Longwick, Bucks.
2019 The People's Landscape, Claydon House National Trust, Middle Claydon, Bucks; Art in Park, Princes Risborough.
2018 Art in the Park, Princes Risborough. The International Postcard Show, Surface Gallery, Nottingham
2017 Art in the Park, Princes Risborough
2016 Art in the Park, Wades Park, Princes Risborough
2012 Get Carta, Karin Janssen Project Space, London
2011 Radicals and Non-Conformists, Studio Gallery, NPG, London. UNEARTHED: the creative history of a brownfield site, Warton House, Stratford, London
2009 Creekside Open, APT Gallery, London. Summer Exhibition, The Architect's Gallery, London. The London Group Open Exhibition, Menier Gallery, London
2008 Unnatural Worlds: Drawings by Emma Williams and Akiko Usami, Casson Gallery, Eastbourne College, Eastbourne
2007 Mapping, Bury Art Gallery and Museum, Bury. Rich and Strange: Altered Books Project, Flock, Newport School of Art Media and Design, University of Wales, Newport. Salon 07, Seven Seven Gallery, London
2006 24London: Berlin, Milan and Barcelona, Berlin, Milan and Barcelona. ArtSway Open, ArtSway, Sway. Gallery 37, DMH Stallard, Jewry St, London EC3. Hidden Talents 06, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London. Sefton Open, The Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport. Summer Open, Wateloo Gallery, London. The Art Pavilion Summer Show, Mile End Park, London
2005 30x30, Vertigo Gallery, London. Summer Open, Waterloo Gallery, London
2003 The map is not the territory part III, James Hockney Gallery, Farnham, Surrey. Well-made 3, Old Town Hall, Stratford, London
2002 Art 2002 London Art Fair, Business Design Centre, London. The map is not the territory part II, England and Co, London
2001 Sefton Open, The Atkinson Gallery, Southport. Slap and Tickle, Vertigo Gallery, London. Summer in the City, Artlink at Sotheby's International Young Art, Online auction
2000 En Route, Galerie Claudia Gross-Selbeck, Dusseldorf, Germany