Kathy Williams

I am curious to find out how the visual arts can occupy a volumic space of experience.. similar to sound/ music and movement/ dance. At the moment I facilitate spaces and offer materials for people to come, to see, to photograph and respond to what we have visually.

I have always made my own work via play, an authentic system ingrained in everything I do.. how lucky to be able to say I work with play! But my spaces to make are then offered to other people in a bid for people to become independent creative thinkers and makers.

It’s more than collaboration as it’s about relationships and people show kindness, generosity as well as the sheer joy of creating something they may not have considered before. These sessions I call Jam sessions and they are framed by a fluid collective of people.. whoever turns up. We Jam.

I have focused art jot as product, and no longer as process.. but art is a verb. We have the present moment and it can never be repeated ever in the same way twice. 
Photographs are important as tools to frame what we see and capture colour/ marks/ shadows of what we do as well as become document and souvenir. The public and people then have ownership of the work. 

My own responses to a place are based on gestural colour painted marks in transparent materials when lit cast shadows across a space. The shadows can be colour, rich with various marks and they move as the shadows move from the sun. We capture our moments of being. We create, we learn together.

I graduated from the RCA in the late 90s and left painting for @20 years . I was a class teacher , which I absolutely loved-and was on a second MA at UCL.. but had to stop when my child became too ill to go to school. I discovered the systems of life that existed outside of  mainstream education and so I tailored my art knowledge to working with other young people who  couldn’t access school/ college.

I have worked with all ages/ intergenerational and at all levels up to degree level art. Wellbeing , Alzheimer’s, SEND, drop ins and full courses I discovered teaching skills kept outcomes open.

I have exhibited work in London and Berlin and mostly southe east, and I’ve learnt that if we don’t fit so well we have to make our own opportunities…. I am real advocate to guiding people and artists in their journeys and share all my experience openly and with love .