Artist Statement
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My current work involves paintings in both acrylic and oil. Some of the surfaces even incorporate dry media and printmaking. The process is a combination of pouring, painting, staining, and sanding the surface. Because of this abrasion to the surfaces of the paintings I work on wood panel, a rigid material that can handle the stress. My materials include urethanes, liquid polymers, acrylics, and water-based gels.
In an effort to introduce a more abstract or organic mark in my paintings, I’ve spent the last couple years developing the pour as a key surface element. It’s introduced an alternate gravity that I’m in the process of reincorporating with strict figurative elements. The resulting image is one in which the figures navigate the picture plane unhinged from strict cultural signifiers. In the process, however, new fictive realities and mythologies are formed.
I’m interested in the extent to which bodies can be taken apart, fragmented, and reassembled to not only reaffirm but to also produce new figurative identities. But along with this more explicit representation of the body, therein lies a somewhat secondary body evidenced by the pour. The broad strokes and bold passages intentionally reference the dimensions of human form. [End Page 917]
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Didier William, Look through the key hole (2013) Acrylic on panel (42” x 48”)
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Didier William, Tumble (2009) Acrylic and oil on panel (90” x 118”)
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Didier William, Lipstick (2014) Acrylic on panel (20” x 28”)
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Didier William, I remember when I was a little girl (2014) Acrylic and oil on panel (42” x 48”)
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DIDIER WILLIAM (b. 1986, Haiti) received the BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2007), and the MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University (2009). In 2003, he studied at the New World School of the Arts. His work has been exhibited in such venues as the Galerie Schuster (Berlin), the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, Deitch Projects in Long Island City (New York), Kravets Wehby Gallery (New York), the Swann Galleries, and “Summer Exhibition” (Olympos, Karpathos, Greece). In 2009, 2010, and 2011, he was a recipient of a Hearst Foundation Grant. He held the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship in painting and in 2009, and earlier in 2006, he received the Morris Lewis Award. In 2013-2014, he was Artist-in-Residence at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation’s Space Program in Brooklyn, New York. In 2014 he was Artist in the Market Place at the Bronx Museum of Art. He is an adjunct assistant professor of art at Vassar College and a lecturer and critic in the School of Art at Yale University.
