Michael Williamson
Merion Station, PA
Educational Background
-
Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of Fine Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, M.F.A. in Painting
-
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, B.A., cum laude
-
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fall term abroad in Rome, Italy
Exhibitions
-
Main Line Art Center, Little Luxuries, September–October 2024
-
InLiquid, New/Now VII, July/August 2024, Fishtown, Philadelphia
-
We Are The River, Stockton University Art Gallery, Group Show, January–April 2024
-
InLiquid, The National Building, Phila, PA, Two-person show, Mindy Flexer and Michael Williamson, September 2023–January 2024
-
The Cosmopolitan Club, Philadelphia, January–March 2023
-
Main Street Arts Small Works Show, Clifton Springs, NY, November–December 2022
-
Main Street Arts Small Works Show, Clifton Springs, NY, November–December 2021
-
Hamilton Street Gallery, Bound Brook, NJ, Group Show, Fall 2019
-
Imperfect Gallery, Group Show, Fall 2019
-
High Point Café, One-Person Shows, 2009, 2011, Winter 2017, Winter 2018
-
Cathedral Village, November–December 2016
-
Imperfect Gallery, Faculty Show, 2015
-
Foulkeways, Faculty Show, 2014
-
The Baldwin School, Faculty Show, 2014
-
JMS Gallery, Chestnut Hill, PA, December 2007, Group Show
-
JMS Gallery, Chestnut Hill, PA, March 2006, Two-Person Show
-
Rosenfeld Gallery, Small Works Show, December 2005
Grants & Awards
Fallingwater Teacher Residency
Art Fellow Residency, Skidmore College
Milton and Sally Avery Scholarship, Bard College
Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut
Employment
Senior Instructor in Adult Education, The Barnes Foundation, 2020 - present
Artist's Statement
Speak Memory is the title of an evocative memoir by Vladimir Nabokov. It is a sensualist's recollection of his early childhood through the distilled, self-aware perspective of the adult novelist.
It is through the lens of memory and feeling that these landscapes emerge. These paintings, their light, color, and tactile surfaces are more about feeling, memory, dream, remembrance, and forgetting.
Most recently I’ve been reading The 1619 Project, Nicole Hannah-Jones, The Brutish Museums, Dan Hicks, and Caste, Isabel Wilkerson and this has informed my subconscious about the forced journey my ancestors made to the Americas. In my mind, these currently constructed paintings trace a journey to freedom from West Africa, South Carolina, and Virginia. The land of my ancestors is the land of savage beauty.
“I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” Maya Angelou
Michael Williamson
