Ian Williams

Ian Williams has travelled a somewhat atypical career path. b.1965 He grew up in the industrial landscape of West Yorkshire, where his parents were teaching, but his family origins in the mining communities of South Wales have always been very important to him. He decided to train as a doctor rather than go to art college and after qualifying in Cardiff he worked abroad for a time before moving back to Wales to spend more time in the mountains and pursue his love of mountaineering. He travelled extensively, and took part in climbing and ski touring expeditions in Alaska and Greenland, documenting these trips in photographs and drawings. He continued to paint throughout this time and began to successfully exhibit and sell his work. His painting received acclaim and he was highly commended in “Young Wales V” at the Royal Cambrian Academy. Feeling that some more formal feedback was needed, he took up postgraduate studies in Fine Art at Chester College. It was at this time of research and experimentation that his work changed from the naïve style he had adopted and took on a more abstract and pared down quality. Ian paints on fat board tablets or deep stretchered canvases and use a technique of applying multiple thin layers of colour and then sanding back to give a smooth, polychromatic surface, which forms the base layer of the painting. The main subject of his work is the modern rural landscape, often based upon the mountains, fields and coastlines of North Wales, exploring the motifs, features and repetitive patterns that draw our attention. The style tends towards ambiguity and relative abstraction, horizontal lines may be read as hedges, cliffs or lines of trees. Man is not present in the paintings, although the marks he has made on the land may well be seen. He currently lives and works in Llanrhaeadr, near Ruthin.