Vivienne Williams was born in Swansea in 1955. She studied English Literature at Reading University taking a Masters Degree in ‘The Literary Response to the Visual Arts’ in 1978. She spent the next five years abroad, teaching English in Venice and Padua and working in an art gallery in Sydney where she began selling her work for the first time. Returning to the UK in 1983 she spent the next seven years studying and working in a Buddhist Community before becoming a full time painter in 1990, returning to Wales at this time.
Her early work was expressive and very colourful, the subject matter mostly flowers. For the last twenty years she has concentrated more on still life painting, her palette constantly evolving, her style distinctive. She has exhibited with increasing success in Wales and further afield, acquiring a large and loyal following. Vivienne Williams was elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy in May 2017. Her work is in public and private collections in the UK and abroad.
"My subject matter is still life - vessels, flowers and fruit. I paint everything from my mind, my imagination and memory, preferring a flattened perspective with simplified forms. There is an emotional significance invested in the objects by returning to them again and again - like working a seam, one painting leads on to the next."
"Colour, form and texture are equally important. The elements within a painting are re-arranged and painted over many times - it is a balancing act, deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. In this way, layers of paint are built up until ordinary paper takes on the feel and weight of old leather. The surface texture is energetically worked and re-worked, scratched, sanded and stained. This is very exciting because at any moment during this process there is an opportunity for a painting to emerge. If the painting is true, you paint your own state of mind. It records who you are and how you feel - your own inner landscape. It always astonishes me when the battle on the paper resolves itself into a calm painting."