Western Morning News (Saturday)
FROM ST IVES WITH LOVE – MEET THE ARTIST
THERE’S an opportunity to meet the artist Emma Williams today in the Livingstone Gallery, 71-73 Fore Street, St Ives, where her exhibition From St Ives with Love is being held. An artist who has cheerfully confessed, “Walking through St Ives always excites me and inspires me to paint. The brightness and white walls make me want to fill everything with colour. My head is always in St Ives. It’s a passion that never dies, and it will always be my starting point for any painting.”
One who studied textile design at Huddersfield University and then worked as a freelance textile designer prior to becoming a full time painter several years ago, she has long since enjoyed quite a reputation for her colourful compositions. Works that have long been sought after, she has exhibited widely and with
success throughout the UK. Renowned for her strong, vibrant style and her use of flat perspective and bold colour, it has been said that her still life interiors and window-framed scenes of the town and harbour evoke happy memories of her childhood holidays in St Ives. Rich with colour and inspired by the vibrant visual combination the artist sees daily all around her, not forgetting the influence of Patrick Heron and iconic St Ives ceramics, these paintings bring a neat contemporary twist to the traditions of still life and landscape. Essentially happy compositions, from Anemones and Olives, Porthmeor View, to Agapanthus in Orla Pot, there is not as much as a trace of melancholy or sadness to be found in her work, and she combines the best of the traditional and the contemporary values of yesterday and today, from both genres in her work. Well worth seeing, Emma Williams’ From St Ives with Love is at the Livingstone Gallery, 71-73 Fore Street, St Ives, until April 20.