Philemona Williamson’s paintings deal with the loss of innocence. Her New Works Exhibition, currently showing in the Beckler Family Members’ Gallery at the Delaware Center For The Contemporary Arts, explores this theme through scenes of adolescence. Influenced by her own childhood in Manhattan her casts of characters are multicultural and mostly female.
Williamson uses repeated imagery as language. There are elements of nature slipped into domestic scenes. Trees and beautifully lush flowers float within the canvas. But the work never puts you at ease. The children in the paintings gaze are almost always averted from the viewer. There is something disturbing beneath the surface. This is highlighted in the inclusion of bees in the paintings Carapace and Looming. The bees are sinister, implying a sense of danger and violence. They are the foreboding of experience and it’s dissolution of innocence. This sense of innocence being lost is profoundly expressed in one of the exhibitions strongest pieces, Taken, which shows scissors cutting off a lock of hair from a forlorn looking young girl. The piece, Yearning To Be, has the one character in the exhibition that does look you in the eyes. She is a young child with a fruit basket on her back. Her direct glare is a shockingly disconcerting after the combined effect of the other paintings. Elsewhere Williamson evokes adolescent sweetness with images of dolls and cupcakes. But the idyllic scene of young girls eating cupcakes in the piece, Happiness Ala Mode, is shattered in the exhibitions other standout work, Sweet Dreams, where a subtle, vicious glass of spilt milk looms on the bottom of the canvas.
There will be multiple reactions to this exhibition and therein lies its power. The work showed here forces nothing. The paintings are vague and ambiguous; they will only evoke the viewer’s personal feelings in regard to their own loss of innocence and adult disillusionment.
Philomena Williamson: New works will be running through July 14 in the Beckler Family Members’ Gallery of The Delaware Center Of Contemporary Arts. The Center is located at 200 South Madison Street, Wilmington, DE 19801. Hours are Tue, Thu, Fri and Sat 10 – 5, Wed and Sun 12 – 5 and closed on Mondays. Admission is always free.
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For More Information Visit:
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http://www.thedcca.org/exhibit/new-work
http://www.philemonawilliamson.com
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Watch Video Coverage Below:
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