Sean Williams

My paintings are views of the fringes of suburbia, places that feel as though they are familiar, but then escape our conditioned response. I aim to place the viewer as ‘still points of a turning world’ – alone, for a while, then possibly watched as they look on. The scene switches between mundane – what is evident and what impacts on our environment, and how we barely see it -and suggesting something may be about to happen. Whilst site works and temporary installations significantly modify landscapes, we often don’t acknowledge that, or how it impacts on our lives. My aim is to identify miniscule but defining details in aspects of suburbia and its edgelands that may reveal something of the modern human condition. The locations portrayed in my paintings represent the in-between spaces of everyday life. Factual and symbolic, the subject matter often relates to states of being and feeling that can be as unfixed, open to question and awaiting definition as any geographical locale featured.

Biography
Sean was born in North Wales in 1966 and is based at Bloc Studios in Sheffield. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Cupola Gallery entitled ‘Oak Park to Meadow View’, and group shows ‘Slow Painting’ at The Plough Arts Centre, Barnstaple, ‘Assembly’ at Rye Creative Centre, and ‘Paint Fiction’ at IGCA in Alaska. His painting ‘Our Bloody Hell’ forms part of the collection in the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. He is also a curator and co-founder of Prosaic curatorial group. In April 2024 he curated ‘Donuts’ at Fronteer Gallery in Sheffield, and ‘Autumn Almanac IV’ at YAS in Sheffield in November 2024.