I see my whole life as preparation for the way I paint. Even though my roots in the rural American Midwest are a major influence in my work, I believe my paintings can speak to people from a variety of places and experiences.

I’m drawn to areas and structures that show character acquired from the history and memory of the people that formed the environment. Aesthetically, I’m interested in light sources and the play of light on surfaces. I use darkness to edit extraneous information to get to the essence of the place. This approach permits me to transform the familiar—unremarkable buildings in rural areas close to my home—into hauntingly isolated scenes.  

More and more, I’m realizing this work is how I dealt with the homesickness I experienced when I moved away from my childhood home in North Missouri to pursue my MFA degree in a southern urban setting. Though I eventually moved back, I’m understanding that home will never feel like it did before I left. It’s this distance that allows me to be aware of my hometown in a way I couldn’t before.     

While my current paintings are beginning to act as strange souvenirs of the places I left and the structures and things I know most intimately, I also love seeing how people from other regions and backgrounds relate to my work. I’m finding the more specific I can be, the more universal the work somehow becomes. I hope my work allows people to think about where they come from and take pride in the collective identity of their home region.

SARAH WILLIAMS received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of North Texas. Her work has been shown in more than forty solo and group exhibitions in eight states, and has appeared in publications such as New American Paintings, American Art Collector, and Create Magazine, among others. Her residencies include the Millay Colony, the Studios of Key West, Ucross, and she was a Willapa Bay Artist in Residence in 2015. Currently, she’s an associate professor at Missouri State University. www.sarahwilliams-paintings.com