Enid Williams received her M.F.A. in painting from Kent State University in 1996 and her B.A. in studio art from the University of Toledo in 1992. In 2012 she was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, recognizing her as an artist of significant achievement. Williams continues to explore the use of kinetic circles and particles interwoven in a primarily white void, a signature characteristic that she describes as both matrix and backdrop. This recurring construct allows for a multitude of visual scenarios to occur. Her meticulously rendered images are informed by a diverse framework that is both contemporary and historical: science, literary conventions, color perception charts, the works of Abstract Expressionists and Op Art are often referenced in titles. These influences have largely inspired the optical complexity and spatial ambiguity of her work. Also citing time as a theme, Williams draws attention to the arrested representation of time in these images and the paradoxically slower but still moving time a viewer may experience when engaging the work. For Williams, this becomes an expression of our attempt at controlling time or preventing change.
Williams has exhibited at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, the State Museum of South Carolina, and the Greenville County Museum of Art, in South Carolina. Additional awards include the Metropolitan Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, SC in 2011, and 2007, the Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2002, the Columbus Museum of Art Purchase Award in 2000, the Hall Memorial Award of Painting, Ohio Art League, 2000, and the Carnegie Museum of Art and Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Milono Painting Award in 1997. Her work is included in public and private collections including the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the Contemporary Carolina Collection at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in OH, the Red Oak Foundation in Fort Worth, TX, and County Bank, in Greenville, SC.
Since 1998, Enid has instructed studio classes at Kent State University, Youngstown State University, and the University of Akron in Ohio. She currently teaches design, painting, drawing and printmaking at the Benson Campus of Greenville Technical College in Greer, SC and maintains her studio practice in Greenville, SC.
Website
http://www.enidwilliams.net
