Vivienne Williams was born in Swansea in 1955. She studied English Literature at Reading University taking a Masters Degree in ‘The Literary Response to the Visual Arts’ in 1978. She spent the next five years abroad, teaching English in Venice and Padua and working in an art gallery in Sydney where she began selling her work for the first time. Returning to the UK in 1983 she spent the next seven years studying and working in a Buddhist Community before becoming a full time painter in 1990, returning to Wales at this time.
Vivienne’s early work was expressive and very colourful, the subject matter mostly flowers. For the last twenty years she has concentrated more on still life painting, her palette constantly evolving, her style distinctive.
She has exhibited with increasing success in Wales and further afield, acquiring a large and loyal following. Over the last twenty-five years she has had regular solo exhibitions in Wales and in 2016 had her first solo exhibition in the Thackeray Gallery in London.
She was a prize-winner at the National Eisteddfod in 1993 and received a highly commended prize at the inaugural Welsh Artist of the Year competition in Cardiff in 2000. She was invited to be on the panel of judges in 2008. Her work was purchased by the Contemporary Art Society of Wales in 2001 and in May 2017 Vivienne was elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy in May 2017.
Her work is in public and private collections in the UK and abroad.
‘I paint pots, jugs and bowls, flowers and fruit. Everything in the picture is re-arranged and repainted many times – deciding what to leave in and what to leave out is a balancing act.
The spaces are as significant as the objects themselves. As the layers of paint build, the surface texture is energetically worked, scratched, sanded and stained. At any moment there is an opportunity for a painting to emerge’.
