The Light from Within

Todd Williamson has brought illumination into his spectrum of painting.  His current exhibition, “Unpolarized Light” which is on view through May 25, 2013 at the George Billis Gallery LA, says it best when asked about this new dimension, “Light emitted by the sun, a lamp or by a candle flame is unpolarized light. Such light waves are created by electric charges that vibrate in many directions, thus creating a wave that vibrates in many directions. The unpolarized light has a wave that has half its vibrations in the horizontal plane and half in the vertical plane.”

     Lighting and light is everything in a room as well as in a movie, including and especially on a performing arts stage. On the other hand, in a painting it takes an artistic masterful mind to capture it on canvas, and in this case Williamson does it completely because what is and what was captured by Todd are the reflections of the light; those that draw a viewer’s attention to the luminosity rather than any specific object or form. And in many ways from my point of view, I find the Williamson’s artworks in the league of the Russian Avant Garde which brought us Rayonism; thusly, they gave the world a new way to see everyday life.    

     In addition, I see artist Williamson’s vision aligned to that of French-American painter, sculptor and writer Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending the Staircase.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duchamp_-_Nude_Descending_a_Staircase.jpg). In that work, the famed artist and ceramist Beatrice Wood was the model as well as another of Duchamp’s lovers.

     While at the Los Angeles George Billis Gallery, art lovers can also experience the chaos and the uncertainty that exists in the art world in Williamson’s works. His use of his textured and parallel lines shows his unrelenting attempt to control this chaos. Williamson says, “Chaos surrounds us in everyday life. Each time we turn on the news we are inundated with more and more unsettling actions and happenings. My lines help me to lay all that I see out in a readable manner, like the way an ancient fresco is read by a scholar. Each movement, color, gesture, tone, and vibrancy in the work is deeply symbolic and can be read by each person that stands in front of the work and looks into the depths that exist there.”

     Williamson’s process is as reductive as it is additive simply because nearly as much paint is removed from the canvas as is applied.  Of course, the paint is removed methodically and carefully to bring out the greatest texture and movement and then reapplied to achieve the final vision. For myself, I could see the passion as well as touch of anger of the deep movements of color, including a tranquility of ‘physical’ nature of the lines as they move up the canvas.

     In my final summary of artist Todd Williamson’s art, I use a line from Marco di Mauro, who said in his essay on the Work, “The visible perception of emotions on canvas.” Viewers have the opportunity to see what this artist sees in the world around him.

By Tony Clark

Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

 

 

Editor’s note: You can discover more about this artist at www.toddwilliamson.com or go to this link and download the digital print at the bottom of this Tony Clark column  www.arttoartpalettejournal.com/2011/09/an-artist-of-many-dimensions