Brian R Williams

Brian R. Williams is a graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design, where he currently teaches figure drawing. His graphite drawings have been exhibited in galleries throughout Ohio, across the United States, and in the United Kingdom, including Baton Rouge Gallery, La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia, and StolenSpace Gallery in London.

His artwork has been published in books and magazines in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Spain, Austria, and Germany. His most recent book illustration project, Dodos on the run (From), is a collection of German poetry written by Berlin-based poet Michael Vogel about extinct and endangered animals. His first museum solo show, Ministers of the Kingdom, was exhibited at the Canton Museum of Art in 2018.


Artist Statement

I start my figurative graphite drawings by imagining encounters between civilization and nature, exploring those encounters using surreal but referential imagery. Civilization in my drawings is represented by human figures, man-made structures, or the objects of daily domestic life. The figures in my drawings are almost never portraits; they are representations of humanity—avatars acting out humanity’s mythological interpretation of nature, or personifications of natural processes such as mountain-forming or the brief shimmer of a gem.

I find this relationship between civilization and nature provokes a wealth of ideas for me to explore in my work. Sometimes I focus on humanity’s destruction of the environment. In other drawings, I choose to visually represent nature’s longevity in comparison to our brief tenure on the planet, or show how the veneer of civilization and technological advancement has obscured humanity’s primitive origins—but we are nevertheless always and will be forever fundamentally connected to nature.

I love the tactile experience of working with graphite and charcoal powder on paper, and I prefer the immediacy of the graphite medium as opposed to mixing paint colors. I work from photo references but I don’t make preliminary sketches; I enjoy starting with a blank sheet of paper and building the drawing’s composition spontaneously.

I’m inspired by the works of the Surrealist painters—especially Leonor Fini and Remedios Varo—and by the dreamlike Pictorialist photographs by the early 20th-century photographers of the Photo-Secession.


brianrwilliams.com