VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Galveston Arts Center is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Denton-based artist Sarah Williams titled Outside the County Seat. The exhibition will open during the October 8th ArtWalk and remain on view through November 20, 2011. Curator Clint Willour will lead a gallery talk with the artist beginning at 6:30 pm during ArtWalk. The event is free and open to the public.

A painter of landscapes, Williams images are inspired by the rural American Midwest where she grew up. Carwashes, parking lots and gas stations stand vacant and isolated, surrounded by the cloak of night, hauntingly illuminated by industrial lighting. Using darkness to edit out extraneous visual information, the artist focuses on sources of light and the ways in which it plays upon different surfaces.

“I paint nightscapes of familiar yet isolated and unremarkable buildings, rooms and scenes located in rural areas,” writes Williams. “The artistic language applied to slightly familiar yet hauntingly isolated areas permits me to transform the common place and make the insignificant, significant.” Affected by varying weather conditions and seasons of the year, distant horizons glow against inky skies, while porch lights illuminate the desolate environs of a rural country farm house or neon reflects off of a bank of snow. These nocturnal settings, radiating with unspecified sources of light, are both visually captivating and eerily mysterious at the same time.

Williams received a BFA from William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri, in 2006, and an MFA from the University of North Texas, Denton, in 2009. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, Missouri, and Marty Walker Gallery, Dallas. In 2010, Williams was a finalist for the Hunting Art Prize. She currently teaches drawing at the University of North Texas, Denton.

Galveston Arts Center is operating in a temporary downtown location on the corner of Market and 25th Streets. The exhibition gallery and selections from GAC’s retail gallery, ArtWorks, are open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 am to 5 pm, and Sunday from noon to 5 pm. Admission is free at all times. A flyer listing all ArtWalk participants with times and locations can be downloaded at www.contemporaryartgalveston.org.

Images Pictured:
Sarah Williams
St. Jo Carwash, 2011
Oil on board
24 x 36 inches
Courtesy the artist and McMurtrey Gallery, Houston

Sarah Williams
Eiolia, 2011
Oil on board
24 x 36 inches
Courtesy the artist and McMurtrey Gallery, Houston

Sarah Williams
Ohio Alley, 2011 (detail above, full image below)
Oil on board
12 x 12 inches
Courtesy the artist and McMurtrey Gallery, Houston