Biography

BRIAN WILLIAMS

Born September, 1950 - Essex, United Kingdom. In post World War II Britain I had a rural childhood amid the joys of a family of five living in a four room terraced cottage with no running water and an outside toilet. The war had ended in 1945, food rationing in the UK was not to end until 1953 and the country was near bankrupt. The fabulous fifties welcomed me with open arms.

1955 – 1967 Primary and High School - life alternated between boredom and mindless bouts of violence but did teach valuable survival skills.
1967 – 1968 - Trainee at a London Quantity Surveying office. (And I thought school was boring!)
1968-1969 – Junior Copywriter for a machine tool manufacturer. (Hard to get too excited about the merits of a sixty-inch sheet metal shearing machine, but I did my best.)
1969 -1973 Saint Martin’s School of Art, London, UK - Studied photography, animation and graphic design. (Life had finally begun and I met my future wife.)
1973 -1976 National Film School, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, UK -. Set in an old film studio, I was part of the third year in-take of 25 applicants, which brought the total school student enrollment up to 75 students. I specialized in cinematography. (Absolute heaven!)
1976 - 1978 New York (“Go West young man and seek your fortune.”) and I did. Freelance cinematographer and graphic designer.
1979 – 1992 New York – R. Greenberg Associates (RGA) - Produced motion picture and television commercial special effects projects and live action filming.
1992 – 2012 New York and Connecticut - Formed Pen & Inc. Produced television commercials, title sequences and corporate videos both here and overseas.
2008 – 2024 Having previously sold my soul to the evils of commercial projects - one has to live after all - I finally started sculpting seriously. With a life-long interest in Fine Arts, I finally got around to doing something about it.

Personal

First came to the US in the summer of 1971 on a student visa as a temporary hotel worker.
Married in the US 1974 and emigrated here in 1976.
Since 1989 we have lived in an early nineteenth century farmhouse in Newtown, Connecticut.
My wife is a painter, and we live with our two adult sons, two rescued dogs, and four cats (two indoor, two outdoor).

Shows & History

October, 2016 - Ridgefield Guild of Arts, Ridgefield, Connecticut - Accepted for their juried show and was one of three people invited to discuss their work.
Summer show 2017 - Arts on the Lake, Carmel, New York - Two freestanding sculptures were part of a workshop and show.
April, 2019 - Five Points Gallery, Torrington, Connecticut - Portfolio added to their database for future show consideration.
April 2020 - Kehler Liddell Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut - Accepted for their juried show,
June 2020 - Ridgefield Guild of Arts. - 2 Pieces for "Bedlam at Home".
August 2020 - Kehler Liddell - selected for small group show - summer 2021.
October 2020 Two person exhibition at Arts on the Lake, Kent, NY.
February 2021 Two person exhibition at Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT.
Selected for the summer juried show "Our DNA" at Kehler Liddell - 2021.
July - September 2021 Small group show "Form Focus Figure" Kehler Liddell.
August - September 2022 - Five Points Gallery - Small Works Juried Exhibition.
October - November 2022 - Arts on the Lake - ConverSational - An Exhibition of 30.
October - November 2023 - Five Points Gallery - Small Works Juried Exhibition.

Reviews & Publications

Art review: The power of Williams’ simple white at Five Points

BY TRACEY O’SHAUGHNESSY | REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
February 3, 2021

White is rarely the neutral color it seems.
It can be pacific or ferocious, benign or savage. It is, in the works of Brian Williams, often both and frequently simultaneously.

Williams is one of two artists in Five Points Gallery’s “Surface and Substance.”
Williams’ abstract landscapes and cityscapes are all about form and structure, how geometric shapes create, not just patterns, but shadows, suggestions and suspense. His work, largely in black and white, has a film noir quality — all those crepuscular alleys and daunting towers. It also bears the allusive quality of conceptual artists like Sol LeWitt or Josef Albers. Just how much can you do with a square? And just how shape shifting is this most elemental of forms?

Williams, who works in wood and acrylic, creates sculptures out of simple geometries, colored black and white, or simply white. That can result in engaging puzzles, like his “Endless Cube,” a Rubik’s Cube construction of maze-like sophistication. Or “Chessboard No. 2,” in which painted blocks stretch across a white landscape. Each cube itself is a chevron, divided by a black triangle on each side. Placing them alongside one another creates a cascade of visual contradictions, a harlequin of patterns.

In another work, Williams plays with alternating black horizontal cubes, like those of sharps or flats on a piano. But the size of the cubes shifts vertically, from smaller at the top to larger at the bottom. The shadows created by the cubes also shift according to how the piece is lit. It’s a sort of mashup between Albers and M.C.. Escher.

And that mighty maw that juts out of the wall like a feral, multi-mandible beast is “Hanging Form No.5,” a series of wood triangles aligned in a 4-by-4 pattern in which triangles at the top are larger and straighter than the smaller, more diagonal ones at the bottom. The serenity of the white color is in direct contradiction to its toothy menace.