Sarah Williams, Cats of New Zealand

Sarah Williams’ bold and decisive movements with the brush and palette knife produce paintings which are rich and tactile. Her works consider the physical process of painting and the material manipulation of paint. Paint is alternately dragged and scraped across her substrates, calling attention to the physical surface of each picture. It is applied layer upon layer; each mixed with the previous application or concealed by the following action to produce subtle variations in texture, colour and lustre.

Williams’ compositions are generally derived from the banal architectural spaces that we move through every day and rarely pause to consider or appreciate - staircases, bare rooms, corridors and the like. However, the geometry of these spaces and the movements and nuances of paint supersede any clear image or schematic in her works. For the Full Circle exhibition she playfully portrays 10 of Aotearoa’s most famous artists as cats. Williams completed an MFA at the University of Auckland in 2010 and is currently based in Timaru.