Clare Williams

These portraits reflect 40 years of working in theatre- a world constructed on artifice where the donning of a costume and the painting of a face allows for the emergence of new truths.
As a surface for paint the skin is in a constant state of change. Williams loves the challenge of capturing the morphing, sweating, wrinkling, peeling and smudging nature of skin- that paper thin, delicate packaging that keeps our complex body in place. Williams is intrigued by how the painted disguise melts away from the face during the course of a show so that the unpainted person begins to collide with the painted performer.

Williams spends weeks preparing for the finished painting. She likes to paint the sitter's skin prior to recreating their likeness on a wooden panel. Sometimes the painted image will then be recreated as a mask and re-animated by another performer.
Initially she works at speed then reduces, rebuilds, eradicates, and reconstructs. The process allows her to understand the nature of the mask worn by the subject. The painting process is like a theatre rehearsal. Characters only emerge after weeks of struggle, gestation, repetition, accidental insight and wrong turns. But at the end of the process the actor takes the stage having conjured up a new creation.
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