It is my belief that art should originate through a painter’s personal experiences in her home environment. I see my whole life as preparation for the way I paint and the work I am currently making. Even though my connection to the small town farm culture that shaped me as I grew up played a major role in how I approach these works, I believe they can speak to people from a variety of places and experiences.
For this body of work, I was recalling the many car trips spent going from one area of the state to another, often at night. Living in such a rural setting, it’s not uncommon to find communities quite spaced out. Often with about 30 miles of uninhabited farmland between each. At night, that distance can be almost meditative to travel through. Usually, the first thing one might encounter when nearing a community is a lighted sign at the outskirts. In the uninterrupted blackness of the rural night, those signs become some strange kind of beacon. Their uniqueness and history also make them wonderful landmarks unlike the ubiquitous golden arches or big box store signs that seem to blur together from place to place with their commonality.
Aesthetically I am interested in light sources and the play of light on surfaces. This led me to paint nightscapes of familiar yet isolated and unremarkable structures and scenes located in rural areas close to my home. I use darkness to edit out extraneous information and provide the viewer with the essence of the place. This approach applied to slightly familiar yet hauntingly isolated areas permits me to transform the common place and make the insignificant significant.
More and more I am realizing how this work unknowingly started as a way to deal with my homesickness when I moved away from my childhood home in North Missouri to pursue my MFA degree in a southern urban setting. Even though I eventually took a job back in my home region, I am understanding that I’ll never be home again in many ways. But it’s this distance that allows me to really see and be aware of my hometown in a way I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. My pride and passion for the rural Midwest is still strong but it’s interesting to see it come through in my paintings now more from something like a visitor’s perspective.
While my current paintings are beginning to act as this strange kind of souvenir of the places I left and the structures and things I know most intimately, I also love seeing how people from other regions and backgrounds relate to my work. I’m finding the more specific I can be, the more universal the work somehow becomes. I hope my work allows people to think about where they come from and take pride in the collective identity of their home region. – Sarah Williams
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