To learn more about available works, please provide your contact information
In her more than four decades-long distinguished career, the American artist Philemona Williamson has created an evocative and compelling body of work that she describes as “visual poems.” Through the veil of personal memory, Williamson’s opaque narratives recall the beauty, drama, and vagaries of innocence. In her paintings, youthful bodies, toys, flora and fauna float and frolic in vibrantly colored dreamscapes. But memory is an unreliable narrator and Williamson’s captivating stories are fragmented, mysterious, and open to interpretation.
- Philemona Williamson
- Crush on Crush , 2023
- Oil on canvas
-
- 40.5 ×
- 51 × cm
- 15 15/16 ×
- 20 × inches
As an African American artist working in the United States, Williamson faced the pressure to engage with the politics and history of race and racism. Although she certainly experienced America’s divisive racial climate, her multilayered work is rooted in the complex experience of her unique childhood. Williamson’s memories have inspired her to examine common themes of adolescence that transcend racial and gender boundaries. She states: “I think of people of color as not confined or defined by our history. I see our history of resilience and perseverance as the inspiration that makes me want to paint and develop my own narratives. It’s a starting point for a multitude of possibilities to create stories that reach far beyond our recent history into a future full of possibilities.”
- Philemona Williamson
- January March , 2016
- Oil on linen
-
- 122 ×
- 152.5 ×
- 3.5 × cm
- 48 ×
- 60 1/16 ×
- 1 3/8 × inches
- unframed
- 126 ×
- 156.5 ×
- 5 × cm
- 49 5/8 ×
- 61 5/8 ×
- 1 15/16 × in
- framed
- Philemona Williamson
- Bold Crush One , 2022
- Oil on linen
-
- 30 ×
- 40.5 × cm
- 11 13/16 ×
- 15 15/16 × inches
- Philemona Williamson
- Embroidered Dream , 2021
- Oil on linen
-
- 122 ×
- 152.5 ×
- 3.5 × cm
- 48 ×
- 60 1/16 ×
- 1 3/8 × inches
Williamson’s unique experiences inform the stories she tells. Much of her content is inspired by the 11 formative years she spent in a luxurious New York City home where her mother and father were live-in employees. Young Philemona was both embraced and valued by the wealthy and eccentric Greek family she lived with. The older teenage daughters treated her like their own little sister. In Williamson’s memory, the years she spent there were magical, filled with music, play acting, and lots of family drama. This unusual world of her youth continues to inspire her idiosyncratic compositions. However, her paintings are not fully realized narratives or illustrations of her past. They are fragments of memories and fantasies that form their own compelling yet destabilizing universe.
— Adrienne L. Childs
- Philemona Williamson
- Water Wheel , 2015
- Oil on linen
-
- 122 ×
- 152.5 ×
- 3.5 × cm
- 48 ×
- 60 1/16 ×
- 1 3/8 × inches
- unframed
- 126 ×
- 156.5 ×
- 5 × cm
- 49 5/8 ×
- 61 5/8 ×
- 1 15/16 × in
- framed
- Philemona Williamson
- A Pause Requested , 2021
- Oil on canvas
-
- 119 ×
- 137 ×
- 3.5 × cm
- 47 ×
- 54 ×
- 1 3/8 × inches
“I was swimming at a pool one day and happened to see a little black boy who had a life preserver around him in the shape of a watermelon. The reclaiming of that racial trope took me by surprise. It seemed powerful that this object meant to lift you up and protect you could also be used by others to drag you down. I replaced the surface with symbols of African sculptures to ward off and protect him from the gaze of danger that is always close to the surface.”
— Philemona Williamson
- Philemona Williamson
- Safe Passage , 2016
- Oil on linen
-
- 122 ×
- 152.5 ×
- 3.5 × cm
- 48 ×
- 60 1/16 ×
- 1 3/8 × inches
- unframed
- 126 ×
- 156.5 ×
- 5 × cm
- 49 5/8 ×
- 61 5/8 ×
- 1 15/16 × in
- framed
- Philemona Williamson
- A Contemplative Perch , 2017
- Oil on linen
-
- 152.5 ×
- 122 ×
- 3.5 × cm
- 60 1/16 ×
- 48 ×
- 1 3/8 × inches
The African-American artist Philemona Williamson (b. 1951) brings together personal and more universal narratives in her brightly colored, large format paintings that portray children and teenagers, often in mysterious situations. She paints directly onto her canvases without preliminary sketches and her paintings thus resemble palimpsests telling their own stories, with multiple layers, figures and scenes appearing across the support, before seemingly being abandoned. Williamson’s works are deeply rooted in her childhood memories and include references to memorabilia, such as dolls typical of American popular culture from the artist’s personal collection, and as such are an invitation to explore mysterious and unfinished tales.
Williamson has been exhibited in numerous American institutions, from her debut solo show at the Queens Museum of Art in 1988, to Metaphorical Narratives, at the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, in 2017, which spanned the thirty years of her artistic career. Her works can be seen in many public collections across the USA and she has been commissioned for several public projects, most notably by the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority. In 2022, she was one of fifteen recipients of the Anonymous Was A Woman prize, awarded annually since 1986 to women artists over the age of 40, in recognition of their previous and future work.
