Emrys Williams

I had gone through a period of deconstructing my work, moving away from a flatter approach to surface and thinking about my work in the early nineteen eighties which was larger and more physical and painterly. So the paintings in the Eisteddfod had a theatrical element with the interior paintings being like a set or “mise en scene”. In Dalkey I made small paintings where the town became like a miniature game with moveable elements; a church, the lighthouse, Dalkey Island ( I called it Dinky Dalkey). 

“Table” is a much larger painting that built upon the approach in Dalkey. “Chair” includes an image of a house in a window, a motif derived from an actual modernist house in the town. “Epiphany “ reflects sea views from the town as well as images derived from other sources.

At the time I had been thinking about  “The Poetics of Space” by Gaston Bachelard. It is a book that has influenced may artists as it deals with ideas about space and what  Carl Jung called the “topography of the mind”; as children we make dens out of blankets and sheets or hide in a wardrobe,; we all feel different in an attic as opposed to a living room or a church. Part of my approach to the series of large works was to think of generic objects or spaces as a starting point i.e. chair, table, island , town etc

As an artist I think that the studio is like an island and working on a large painting is like embarking on a long   journey. Although in retrospect there seems to be a logic in my account of the development of these works they were made from a place of “not knowing” and each work was a discovery, made through a process of experimentation and improvisation.