Horizons

by Cynthia Penna

The horizontal line on which the entire research of Williamson, his entire poetic, centers is representative of a great variety of themes.
First of all it must be underscored that Williamson’s inspiration is absolutely personal and original, even if other artists have, in the past, ventured on a stylistic research based on the horizontal line: the one among them all who immediately comes to my mind is another American, the great artist Max Cole, who has conducted research for more than 40 years on the horizontal line interspaced by small vertical rods that fractured them, at the same time giving them continuity.
But it is important to clarify that only element the two artists have in common is that the line is linked to their childhood and youth experience in their home countries, namely Kansas in the case of Max Cole and Alabama in that of Williamson.
Both evoke the memory of the immensity of the American prairies that seemed to go on forever, even beyond the horizon; an infinite and continuous horizon in continuous expansion, to the point of creating a sense of nothingness and thus of vertigo.
The two artists have nothing else in common; rather, the stylistic divergences of a monochrome and flat pictorial universe without any indulgence in lyricism in the case of Cole, where the line predominates, alone, in a repetition that I would venture to define “maniacal”, with a total absence of any element of light or movement, but with a soul and an interiority that nevertheless bursts forth, powerfully, from the simple line drawn across the scenario.
What Williamson introduces and exteriorizes in his canvases is a completely different matter: research of light, research of a movement that is not constrained within a geometry for geometry’s own sake, but that vaunts strong overtones of pure lyricism.
A lyricism that is closely linked to, and determined by, the color that is applied to the canvas in a monochromatism interrupted by blades of light, some of them delicate and barely perceptible, others powerful and violent, almost to the point of suggesting a true life experience of life, and an experience of communication with the world.
The lines that appear on the canvases, in a horizontal succession, are more than mere repetitions of painted sign; they seem to be moved by an inner energy that make them resemble cerebral synapses or magnetic waves, or electric discharges. But as we know, electricity is nothing but pure Energy: the substratum that determines and moves the entire universe.
These lines therefore seem to go beyond the finite space of the canvas, to expand and project to wards an indeterminate infinite: an expanse on towards the interior, that seems to continue on the wall’s of the room, and to venture into the city, into the world, into space, to invade the entire universe.
A universe that has its origin in the interior world of the artist, and that expands to embrace all humanity.
A message that goes beyond the intimate dimension between artist and spectator, becoming universal is a shared experience of feeling and emotion.
And it is precisely on an emotional level that Williamson paintings act: personal and intimate emotions determined by any event that strikes him, and that conveys, rendered on the canvas, with the purpose of making those who observe his works feel the same.
Williamson paints under the emotional drive on any event: the emotions are interiorized and than exteriorized once again through the only media available to him, namely painting, made of very pure lines bared of any figurative accent and pure color skillfully manipulated in very subtle shades that evoke the subtle shades of sensibility and his perceptions.
And by doing so, he seeks the world of communication with others, a visual message, a research of exchange and emotions, feelings and sensibilities that lead him to an authentic relationship with others, free from every superfetation and every limit.
Also Williamson’s message is of a sociopolitical character, he aims to convey feelings of peace and mutual respect between humans, because on a level of the sensibilities, emotions and feeling of the human soul there are no differences in sex, race or belonging; we are all united by the fact that we are part of a universe that is largely unknown, and so much more immense than we are.