"PERFORMANCE” ART: a visual dialogue

The opening of the new Wortham Center for the Performing Arts included an expanded and transformed lobby that connects three theatre spaces. With the help of the architects at Clark Nexsen, the outdated early 1990s design and color palette received a sleek, updated look.

The finishing touch, though, came in the form of an incredible contribution by renowned local artist Constance Williams. Pulling from a visual study of the new space and personal observations from years as a Wortham patron, Williams’ “COLORFUL PERFORMANCE” was installed in February 2020, truly finishing this elegant space.

To give insight into her creative process, Williams explained the following:

“Inspiration can be elusive; I often find it within the making or reflecting at completion, which unveils its archives of influence. The painting is my interpretation of the human figure transformed into colorful patterns, traversing, converging, assembling and conversing into a static object. I took my color cues from the yellow and grey marketing materials and recent lobby refurbishment. The linear space dictated the flow of the 15-foot painting and installation.

"Correlations I make between visual and performing arts are the patterning of movement, scale, space, sound, silence, color, dark and light. The crucial difference is that audience participation is essential in a live performance. As a painter and sculptor, I am continually editing all my senses, rendering them into a condensed visual language, a quiet place of reflection for one or all.”

Born in Somerset, England, Williams became enamored with the arts in all of its forms from an early age. By age 8, she was an accomplished pianist, played multiple instruments, painted in various mediums, and sculpted with anything she could lay her hands on. In her early teens, Williams excelled at sculpture and continued painting in multiple mediums. At 17, she majored in art and was a film set intern in London. Her move to the U.S. saw her establish an award-winning international greeting card company. In 2004, her move to Asheville was the impetus to propel her professional career as a full-time artist. She delved back into sculpture with great success in 2005, and it was her use of waxes in 2006 on a post-fired sculptural work that forayed her into painting with encaustic for the next 10 years. In 2015, she added alcohol ink to her repertoire, which she used with her encaustic paint medium. In the years that followed, she began exclusive use of alcohol ink, experimenting on different substrates.

Williams draws inspiration from nature’s structure. Geological and topographical observation become abstracted, flattened by her trademark spherical and striated patterning, rendering expressive compositions. She has developed a unique style into a reimagined rhythmic visual dialogue and innovating her medium.

Williams creates her signature work by blending alcohol-based, acid-free, highly pigmented fluid paint mediums. She uses unique techniques in multiple layers on different substrates to capture an arena of colors and shapes.

To see more of Constance Williams’s stunning work, visit constancewilliamsstudio.com.

COMING SOON: 2019-2020 Artist-In Residence Shana Tucker interprets Constance’s art through music in a free video workshop for K-4 students. Learn more at worthamarts.org.

Shana Tucker interprets Constance Williams' art in the Wortham Center lobby.