About

My name is Sean Williams and I am an artist based in Sheffield at Bloc Studios. The majority of my artwork is painting but I have also recently exhibited some photography. I have also curated a number of art projects, which I began with ‘Urbia’ in October 2006 at the University of Sheffield Library Gallery, pursued with ‘Drawn’ at Sheffield Clocktower Gallery in July 2010 and ‘Hydro Power’ at the same venue in August 2011. I curated a show of contemporary painting entitled ‘Pure Joy (Wins Again)’ at The Coterie Gallery in High Green, Sheffield in June 2012.
In my painting practice I concentrated on making a new body of work consisting of ten paintings which were exhibited firstly in a solo show at Chigwell School in London, running from October 2011 to January 2012, then Junction Arts Centre in Goole in August 2012, and then at the Embassy Theatre in Skegness in the summer of 2013. In January 2014, Edwin Aitken and I held a two-person show entitled ‘Helter Skelter’ at Harrow Arts Centre. In 2011 I was shortlisted for the Marmite Painting Prize, in 2012 for the Woolgather Art Prize, and in 2013 for the Neo:Art Prize. In July 2014 I was shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize and had a solo show at Space2 Gallery in Watford.  In September of 2014 my painting ‘No-one Is Quite Sure’ was included in the ‘Contemporary British Painting’ show at Huddersfield Art Gallery and in October my painting ‘Guaranteed Pleasure’ was included in the ‘@PaintBritain’ show at Ipswich Art School.  In November my painting ‘How Can This Survive’ featured, along with work by Turner, in an exhibition entitled ‘Picturing Sheffield’ at the Millennium Galleries.

Using an adapted pointillist technique, these are urban and suburban views, an exploration of the wide variety of places where we choose to live. I aim to present paintings that, for a brief moment, could be mistaken for photographs and then reveal themselves to be made up of increasingly looser brush-marks and daubs, the colouring vivid without being Fauv. The imagery lies in ordinary suburbia yet there is a sense something is about to happen. Painting is the thing that enables me to most accurately communicate my doubt.

email: swseanwilliams@gmail.com