“For contemporary figurative painter Kent Williams, “the tactile qualities of the painted surface, the mark-making itself, plays as big a role in the resonance of a work” as its narrative aspects. And his bold compositions definitely convey some semblance of a story–albeit one that seems to come in from the side rather than straight on–conjuring the dream logic of reorganized time and requiring the viewer to “take part in the construction of the meaning.” Drawing is integral to Williams’s process, both as a means and as an end. “It’s through passion for drawing, or my struggle to interpret with honest effort, that my personal language is revealed,” he says.”
-Santa Fean magazine, June/July, 2014
Kent Williams' work has been the subject of a number of solo exhibitions over the past ten years, including shows in New York City, San Francisco, CA, Sundance, UT, The Duke Museum of Art, Durham, NC, and in Los Angeles, CA, where he is represented by 101/EXHIBIT.
Primarily a figurative painter, Williams' work explores, in both bold and subtle ways, and often through a suggestion of narrative and woven symbolism, the thread of life that ties us together as human beings. Embracing our virtues while not shying away from our faults, he shows us portraits of ourselves, intense and penetrating.
A graduate of The Pratt Institute in New York, Williams, a consummate draftsman and painter, has realized his work through various other artistic channels as well; that of the illustrated word and the graphic novel (most recently, THE FOUNTAIN with filmmaker Darren Aronofsky), printmaking, photography, design, architecture, and film.
A selection of his works on paper, KENT WILLIAMS: DRAWINGS & MONOTYPES, was published in 1991, and KOAN: PAINTINGS BY JON J MUTH & KENT WILLIAMS, was published in 2001. KENT WILLIAMS, AMALGAM: PAINTINGS & DRAWINGS, 1992-2007 is the most comprehensive collection of Williams' work to date, with recent books EKLEKTIKOS (2011) and :OPTHALM (2013) covering his career up to today. Williams is the recipient of a number of awards for his work including The Yellow Kid; Lucca, Italy's prestigious comics award. In 2001 he was invited to be a fellow at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab in Sundance, UT.
Williams returned as a visiting instructor to The Pratt Institute, and has since gone on to teach at The California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA; East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, and The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Valencia, CA. He currently teaches contemporary figurative painting at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.
Explorations of Audubon: The Paintings of Larry Rivers and Others
Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York's HQ,
King's Road,
London
The Charlotte Observer covers Kent Williams' exhibition at Davidson College.
Widewalls covers Kent Williams' 2014 solo show How Human Are You at 101/EXHIBIT.
Kent Williams: Eklektikos
Published by Allen Spiegel Fine Arts
Text by Peter Frank, Alex Ross.