Painting Emotional Games

- by Jon Devin

Artists are familiar with risk-taking, an essential skill in developing something with visual and aesthetic appeal. Whether it’s expressing an unpopular theme, or experimenting with technique, artists create their own artistic voices when they try something they’ve never done before. One Memphis artist-on-the-rise, Kiersten N. Williams, can tell you that life, like her art, took a turn from mundane to magical when she finally decided to throw away the rulebook.

At the age of 26, Williams, a native Memphian, already has impressive credentials as well as a knack for surprising people with the maturity of her work. Currently, her paintings sell in Little Rock and other Mid-South venues. She recently headed to the U.S. Virgin Islands to teach a month-long class in collage at the Caribbean Museum with her boyfriend, fellow-artist Anthony Lee. She accepted an invitation from international artist Eric Noel to participate in a show in Amsterdam, and she’s eagerly awaiting details of her first solo show in Memphis in April.

Williams is about to take the hearty step forward from local to global forums, so how did she get to this point?

“(Risk-taking) is scary,” says Williams, at home in her basement studio at Marshall Arts, downtown. “It’s a whole new territory. Your whole life you’re taught to go to school, go to college, and get a job. Just to do something like being an artist, with no rules, manners or restrictions is tough. And no one in my family has ever done it before, so it was up to me to get it done.”

Williams and her family knew she had talent from an early age. She graduated from Overton High School, which focuses on the arts. For college though, Williams found herself following a somewhat prescribed formula for starting a career. She turned down a scholarship to the Memphis College of Arts and instead went to the University of Memphis where she got a degree in business management. Upon graduating, she accepted a job in that field, which did not hold her interest for long.

“I hated that job,” she says. “I woke up in the morning dreading going to work and thinking this can’t be real life.”

After leaving the job, she picked up her paint brushes again, sold three pieces in her first show, and said she was never going back to an office.

Raw talent isn’t enough to be successful in a world full of talented people, though, so Williams had to do some soul-searching to find her way.

“When I first started painting, I didn’t have a lot of voice,” she says. “I just knew I wanted to paint. Someone said ‘why don’t you start incorporating something about yourself in your painting.’ That’s what makes good artists. People see that and they can relate.”

Her own journey as an artist is a strong theme in her work now. In Games People Play, a series of mixed media on wood, Williams likens societal protocol to the games of childhood. Unlike kickball, Simon Says, and tic-tac-toe, she says most people never give up manipulation, bargaining, and perfectionism.

“As I got older I thought that people would be more mature, but I saw people doing things that I saw them doing in high school. I started painting about emotional games, because I find it interesting how people interact with each other,” she says.

In Hopscotch a young girl looks warily at a foreshortened hopscotch board in the background as circular designs blossom at her feet. Williams says that hopscotch is a game about who can stay within the lines best and dance in the appropriate steps. While it’s good for children to learn social skills which help them function professionally, adults must be able to transcend rules which become limiting and even asphyxiating later in life, Williams says.

The girl is outlined in milk chocolate brown against a patchwork quilt of medium tones of green, yellow, and pink. Williams says she has been playing with spray paint lately, which in this case makes for a strong background of warmth. The girl’s dress is made of burlap with illegible print which adds to the painting’s overall multi-dimensionalism. The circular features, representing wholeness in life, add a level of energy juxtaposed against the girl’s placid thoughtfulness.

Another startling painting currently on display at a gallery in Little Rock is titled Big Boys Don’t Cry. In it, a motherly figure holds the hand of a crying boy, representative of the emotional immaturity that grown men suffer because they have been told as children to bottle their feelings.

“And now I see it as a sign of strength when a man takes a risk and shows his true feelings,” Williams says.

And then there’s the wall.

If it’s true that all great art is the result of conflict, then Williams’ studio wall bears the brunt of her frustrations. Amongst clouds of bright colors are adages and mantras which eventually meld thier way into Williams’ artwork.

“Dreamy, Creamy Bull” immediately jumps off the wall - a slogan for Williams’ perception of how people often cater to the establishment as a trade-off to experiencing their own reality.

“Dreamy, Creamy Bull is my vow to live consciously,” Williams says. “So many people are living this dreamy, creamy bull life and it’s just a reminder.”

Another mantra painted on the studio wall,

Choice
Chance

represents the fractious decisions people must make to either choose their destinies or accept what befalls them. Williams uses it to remind her that she reached a certain place in life because of her own purposeful choices.

One choice Williams is proud of making is living as an artist in Memphis. While other, larger cities offer more galleries and plenty of potential for development, she says she likes the element of conflict in Memphis that often influences her artistic energy. Spreading her wings, yet remembering her home, Williams looks forward to a career of continued growth, whatever the risk.