Contact me at swiftcharles@icloud.com
15.5.24
I feel a little like I'm convalescing. Last year was so very busy, and this year feels more like a time for taking stock. I've been preparing for a talk I'm giving at the North Yorks Art School, in Scarborough, focussing on The Butcher's Shop, Il Mondo Nuovo, and Mr Oldham And His Friends, and it's had the effect of a retrospective on me - I've been reflecting on all the work I've made over my thirty-odd years as a painter, so far. It's odd how certain things gain more importance than others. I look forward to returning to the studio, but who knows what will happen there?
11.3.24
It's been nearly a year now since I was elected President of the RWS. Lots of things have happened; the latter half of the year saw two solo exhibitions and a flurry of smaller things, as well as a three person show 'Citizens and Subjects' with Jesse Wiesel and Phil King at Fred Mann's beautiful new gallery in Islington. I got my PhD in September, too. Then there was a show in Canterbury called 'Storytellers', with a load of artists form this area, including Billy Childish and the photographer Perou.
I also published another article in Turps magazine on Joseph Highmore's 'Mr Oldham and His Guests', one of my favourites...
27.4.23
I've just been elected President of the Royal Watercolour Society. It's a venerable institution indeed. I'm not sure I'm up to the job quite frankly, as I am basically a lazy, self-centred individual who'd prefer to muck about in the studio all day and then drink wine with friends in the evening, and that's about it. I only hope the secret never gets out.
31.3.23
My dear friend @jasonglenister and his friend @damianrussell_ made a lovely film of me in my studio. I don't know why. You can watch it here
22.2.23
The old PhD stretches on. I think it'll be over with soon, though. New Art Projects is about to move from Broadway Market to Peto St North, London E16 1DN and it sounds like it's going to be pretty amazing. I'm going to be in a three-person show with Phil King and Jesse Wiedel there, which is fantastic. What a PV that will be!
23.9.22
I am trying to finish my PhD. It's dreadful. That's why I haven't been remotely active on Social Media or anywhere else, really.
There's a show opening soon at Linden Hall Studios in Deal, with a couple of my watercolours - it's with the NEAC, an exhibition society with whom I have a long history.
Next year I have been offered a solo show at The Table, Hay in June, and there's something pretty exciting happening at New Art Projects but I can't say what...
Here's my latest artist's statement and CV
Artist Statement
Charles Williams' recent works see a flight from his usual depictions of people and rather focus on animals.
Williams' works try to explain animals through their relationships with us, exploring the belief that our encounters with them are always doomed to be one-sided and that the relationships are metaphorical, allegorical and analogical. This change of direction stems from feeling the need to create a presence without telling a story about the cultural web which surrounds human beings or at least try to escape it. Through the paintings, Williams questions whether he can escape this cultural web and how this new world would look.
Williams makes references to a William Blake drawing called A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poet (Elisha in the Chamber on the Wall) which appears on the page as a vision of a tiny room like a trompe l'oeuil, as if you were seeing the actual room cut into the page with magical goings-on inside. It is this feeling that he wants for these paintings – as if these odd creatures were just there, floating in the space that hovers in front of you.
His work is compiled from a dialogue between him in his studio environment, and the stories and ideas that keep him company in both his imagination and memory. This dialogue also references painting works that have left a significant hold on him. Joseph Highmore's Mr Oldham And His Guests, Annibale Carracci's The Butcher's Shop, Daniel Stringer's 1776 self-portrait are notable works that have done this for Williams.
Writer Evelyn Waugh described his friend Anthony Powell's fictional characters as ‘having an effect like an aquarium' - “One after another various specimens swim towards us; we see them clearly, then with a barely perceptible flick of fin or a tail they are off into the murk.” This certainly feels like an apt analogy to the process in Williams' painting works.
Artist CV
Solo Exhibitions in last ten years:
2023 My Animal Nature, Tim Williams Gallery, Drone Valley, Devon
2023 The Table, Hay on Wye
2022 My Animal Nature, New Art Projects, London Fields, London
2019 The Death Of Joe Skipping, Studio 1:1, Shoreditch, London
2016 Louise Bourgeois And Other Stories, Studio 1:1, Shoreditch, London
2015 Memento Mori, Lilly Zeligmann Gallery, Laren, Netherlands
2014 ‘Figure & Ground', _SURFACE Gallery, Shoreditch, London
2012 ‘Short Stories', Atrium Space, BAT, London
2011 Lily Zeligmann Gallery, Netherlands
Selected Recent Group Exhibitions 2015 - 2022:
2023
Citizens and Subjects, New Art Projects, Islington, London, with Jesse Wiesel and Phil King
Storytellers Beaney Gallery, Canterbury
RWS Spring, Bankside Gallery, London
RWS Autumn, Bankside Gallery, London
NEAC, Mall Galleries, London
2022
SpringbreakLA, with New Art Projects, Los Angeles
RWS at Horsham Museum and Art Gallery, Horsham
NEAC, Mall Galleries, London
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
Urban Sublime, Coningsby Gallery, London
2021
John Moore's Painting Prize, Walker Gallery, Liverpool
Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries
Turner Open, Turner Contemporary, Margate
2020
Some New World, Charles Williams and selected work from other members of the British Council Fellowship to the Venice Biennale, Daphne Oram Building, CCCU (Sponsored by the British Council)
National Portrait Gallery Competition, London
Sunday Times Watercolour Competition
Wells Contemporary
2019
The Lost Paintings Of Herzog Dellafiore (with Daniel Devlin), Studio Golo Brdo, Croatia
Wash 2 (co-curated with Francesca Flowers), Angela Flowers, West Cork, Ireland
Urban Contemporary, Espacio Gallery, London
2018
Susak Expo, Susak, Croatia
Lynn Painter Stainers, London
2017
Painting (Now), Studio One Gallery, Wandsworth, London
2016
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London.
Two Potters And A Painter, Linden Hall Studio, deal (with Arthur Neal and William Plumptre)
Localism And Legacy, Fleur Gallery, Faversham
2015
A-genda, with Brian Chalkley and Jacqueline Utley, Studio 1:1, Shoreditch, London
Surface, _SURFACE Gallery, Shoreditch, London
Autocatalytic Future Games, noformat gallery, Woolwich, London (curated by playpaint)
Fellowships
2019 British Council Fellow at the Venice Biennale
Publications:
2022 Self, W et al Charles Williams, New Art Projects, London
2019 Devlin, D, and Williams, C. The Lost Paintings Of Herzog Dellafiore, Spiralbound Press, London
2019 Williams, C. Talking To Louise Bourgeois ed. 2, Spiralbound Press, London
2018 Williams, C Susak/Susak, Susak Press, London ISBN 978-1-9056591-5-9
2017 Williams, C. Talking To Louise Bourgeois, Spiralbound Press, London
Art Educator:
2016 - 2018 Programme Director, Fine Art, Canterbury Christ Church University
2015 - 2018 Senior Lecturer, Fine Art, Canterbury Christ Church University (fractional)
2012 - 2015 Sessional Lecturer on the BA(Hons) Fine and Applied Art, Canterbury Christ Church University
In Collections:
British Design Council, British High Commission in Nairobi, HSBC, Chevron UK, Westminster And Hammersmith Hospital Trust, Paul O'Grady, Angela Flowers, University of Leeds Library, Private Collections
4.5.22
It has been a bit of a roller coaster ride in the last few months. The Spring Break Art Fair in LA was amazing, and was closely followed by a solo exhibition at New Art Projects. The Private View was lovely, and then we put together a publication about the work. Will Self very kindly wrote a piece for it, and came to visit the show. You don't always find your heroes live up to your imagination, but he did.
You can buy the book through the gallery - see the Books page.
I am now represented by New Art Projects.
My Portrait Artist of the Year winning painting of Asa Butterfield, along with my self portrait, are in the Compton Verney exhibition until 5th June.
I am also re-starting my PhD...
12.2.21
Lots of good shows I was in over 2020 were either cancelled or just online. There was a lovely one about telling stories that some of the other British Council Fellows organised that was supposed to start in the week that the first lockdown started, for example. At the moment I'm finishing my PhD, so I've just holed up and got on with it, painting, reading and writing, just waiting for the real stuff to start again. I got into the John Moore's, which is a huge accolade and an ambition fulfilled, but the private view was on Zoom and I never got to the show.
John Moore's
Walker Gallery, Liverpool 12th February, 2021
Portrait Competition, National Portrait Gallery
With my painting of Will Self. It's still online somewhere
Sunday Time Watercolour Competition
Interesting Times In Venice
London Metropolitan University, December 2020 to January 2021
Some New World
24th January to 21st February 2021, Daphne Oram showing space, Canterbury Christ Church University. An exhibition of work made in response to a British Council fellowship at the Venice Biennale, 2019
The Lost Paintings of Herzog Dellafiore
at Studio Golo Brdo, Rovinjsko selo, 52210 Rovinj, Croatia. 23rd October to 23rd Decemeber 201. A project with Daniel Devlin
Solo show at Studio 1.1, Shoreditch, London. July 2019
Venice Biennale: in September, I was part of the British Council team, stewarding the Cathy Wilkes exhibition in the British Pavilion, It is a British Council Fellowship: half of the time is spent in the Pavilion and the other half pursuing my own research. It consisted of an ethnographic study, linked to the GD Tiepolo work in the Ca' Rezzonico.
Wash 2 in Ireland: My friend Francesca Ibbotson Flowers and I curated a second version of the exhibtion we put on at Resort in Margate. Called,Wash 2, it consisted of Irish and British watercolour painters, and was at Angela Flowers' house in Duneen.
March 2019 at Espacio Gallery, Shoreditch - a group show with Michael Johnson, Suzanne Du Toit and Frank Creber, among others, about the urban environment.
In Summer 2018 I applied for a scholarship to study my PhD, "Did You Just Make That Up?", an auto-ethnographic examination of my studio practice, full-time, and I got it, so now I am a full-time student for the next three years, at Canterbury Christ Church University. My supervisor is Tim Long. This gives me the chance to think through what I have been doing for the past thirty years.
Susak Expo 2018
I was invited to take part in Susak Expo - Susak Free State and produced the book Susak/Susak (available by request), for which I was sponsored by the Centre for Practice Based Research in Art at CCCU.
Lynn Painter Stainers Prize exhibition, 2018
Talking To Louise Bourgeois
Published April 2017 by Spiralbound Press
http://susakpress.org/spiralbound/books/bourgeois.html
Painting (Now)
A survey show of smallish paintings at Studio One Gallery, Wandsworth. I missed the PV, because I was giving a reading of 'Talking to Louise Bourgeois' at the Sidney Cooper Gallery in Canterbury.
20-30th April, 2017
http://www.studio1gallery.co.uk/gallery_719511.html#!
Louise Bourgeois And Me And Other Stories
Solo show at Studio 1.1
3rd November to 27th November 2016
I am about as proud of this as I have ever been of a show.
Two Painters And A Potter
Me, my chum Arthur Neal and a ceramicist called William Plumptre in a show at Linden Hall Studio in Deal.
It's from 3rd September to 2nd October 2016, and it looks fantastic, the gallery is probably the best looking place I have ever shown in. It's also lovely to show with my old friend.
Localism And Legacy
Faversham in World War One
is a show I am in from 5th to 28th August 2016.
There is a talk at 3pm on the 27th.
The gallery is Fleur Gallery, 10-13 Preston Street, Faversham, Kent.
There's AV stuff on the page 'Localism And LEgacy' on this site, and the images are on 'Faversham Project'
Autocatalytic Future Games
was the title of a show I was in, organised by playpaint, in noformat gallery, Woolwich, in June 2015. I missed the Private View and the packingup party, because we were on holiday in Majorca. Majorca was nice, but they would have been good parties.
Studio 1.1
put my work in a group show, called
(A) genda
with Jacqueline Utley and Brian Chalkley
in May 2105
Surface
was another group show I curated with
Fran Flowers &
Richard Scott
at
51 Scrutton Street
London EC2A 4PJ
April 2015
Wash: watercolour in contemporary art
was a group show I curated with
Fran Flowers
at
Resort Gallery
in Margate between 7th and 23rd November 2014
Figure & Ground
was a solo show at
51 Scrutton Street
London EC2A 4PJ
til 3rd December 2014
I was in
This Year's Model 2014
at Studio 1:1, 57a Redchurch St, Shoreditch E2 7DJ
but they still haven't told me it's over...
And 'selected' for the WWGallery's SOLO Award 2014. Doesn't look like it's an actual show that I can be in, as I did'nt win the SOLO Award itself, but I am in good company
http://www.wilsonwilliamsgallery.com/solo.htm
You'll have to cut and past this to your browser, sorry the link thing isn't working...
Pink Knickers 46 x 34 ins was in the Threadneedle Prize 2103
