Art heros - Fred Williams

Australian landscape artist Fred Williams studied in the UK in the 1950s. A few years back, the British Museum had a show of his prints -- I didn't see it, but finding the book in a book sale got me interested in his work. I used a print of trees, rather like this oneas a starting point for a small quilt (shown here). Then I saw his big landscape paintings in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne - a whole room full of his Pilbara series. Wonderful. And there's a book!

I was taken to walk along the Yarra at Kew, the subject of this print --Recently Tate Modern showed a roomful of paintings and prints in the "Sign and Texture" exhibition. It included Riverbed from 1981, one of the last paintings he made --What I didn't know until looking carefully through the Tate website, from which these images are respectfully plundered, is that his studio (in Upwey, in the Dandenongs outside Melbourne) was in a valley, so he raised the horizon in his compositions, leaving a narrow band of sky at the top -- as in Upwey Landscape 1964-5 --
You can see his distinctive style - he reduces the landscape to an all-over pattern, with small touches of paint to show trees and shrubs. "Rather than painting the landscape realistically, Williams was more concerned with exploring and creating a visual language through which he could express the character or essence of a particular Australian location in an inventive manner" says this resource.


Finally, Burnt Landscape 1970 - one of his Bush Fire paintings --
Ironically, this painting is one of the few that survived a fire at the warehouse where Williams stored his works.