Warner on Art:
Abstract painters liberated me structurally, and freed me from the tyranny of the sky. I could completely ignore that sky and just build stuff coming from the top and the bottom and all over the place.
Keith Boyle gave me permission to use a clean line - and he was using color in a more structural way spacially, very flat colors and very clean lines - compositionally I borrowed a lot from him, with things coming in from the edges. I studied figure drawing with Keith Boyle.
Abstract painters liberated me structurally, and freed me from the tyranny of the sky. I could completely ignore that sky and just build stuff coming from the top and the bottom and all over the place.
Keith Boyle gave me permission to use a clean line - and he was using color in a more structural way spacially, very flat colors and very clean lines - compositionally I borrowed a lot from him, with things coming in from the edges. I studied figure drawing with Keith Boyle.
Warner Williams is featured in the March 2016 issue of Hi Fructose Magazine!
I chose a 35,000 year-old tradition of painting as an alternative. I believe in sacred geometry, significant form and the spirit resonance of color because I have seen them. Space, light and color reactions are used as a kind of retinal research in my work.
By using multiple vanishing points I can see over many horizons.
I seek the level of poetry and music in a tightly structured whole.
I want to redo Rothko from nature.
Warner Williams
I chose a 35,000 year-old tradition of painting as an alternative. I believe in sacred geometry, significant form and the spirit resonance of color because I have seen them. Space, light and color reactions are used as a kind of retinal research in my work.
By using multiple vanishing points I can see over many horizons.
I seek the level of poetry and music in a tightly structured whole.
I want to redo Rothko from nature.
Warner Williams
Frontality Motel
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Liquor Store
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Burbank
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Smokestacks III
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Bordello |
"My work is about light and space. Sometimes my work is symbolic. The basis is a geometric, linear division of space, like the facets of a gem. The interactions and proportions of colors within those divisions will re-create the components of a beam of light."
"The space is tactile, touchable, plastic. I seek an art that recedes from the viewer,
pulls them in, rather than the usual assertive space. A main principle is unity of space, light, form and expression. My influences were Botticelli, Vermeer, Seurat, Matisse, and Rothko. I want to redo Rothko from nature."
"The space is tactile, touchable, plastic. I seek an art that recedes from the viewer,
pulls them in, rather than the usual assertive space. A main principle is unity of space, light, form and expression. My influences were Botticelli, Vermeer, Seurat, Matisse, and Rothko. I want to redo Rothko from nature."
Flight Lesson
Motel Row II
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Storage Space
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Further
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Dayhawk
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Dreamdate |
Drake Motel
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Getaway
Playground IV
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Candyland
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Jukebox
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Mortuary by the Sea
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Playground I
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Ponderosa Ranch
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Postcard
Daly City Fog
For a link to a page with Names, Sizes and Dates of all paintings.
All paintings are oil on canvas.
All paintings are oil on canvas.
The show at Omiiroo Gallery, at 329 15th st., Oakland, California (Opening Saturday, February 13, 2016), was the first one-man show of oil paintings at a commercial art gallery in the Bay Area by Warner Williams.
Warner has stood on the outside of the art world for over 30 years - I have heard him criticize the art world and our current civilization many times. Warner calls his work "post-contemporary" to indicate his intention to make a break with an art world that hasn't grown in 50 years, and that he believes is based on an old, failed ideology. Warner is providing his answer to the discontents of our current civilization by creating a consistent body of work that unites classical techniques with the liberating energies of early modernism, cubism and abstract expressionism.
Weilding his mastery of the ancient skills - color reaction, sacred geometries, and mythopoetic content, Warner has created a bright and distorted reflection of the "state" of California, our Golden State, which has now gained an extraordinary body of oil paintings, visions of the beloved mundane, created in response to California's beauties and her horrors.
"I believe Contemporary Art is the new academy. It's 50 years old, and it is time to move on. It's based on a cynical and nihilistic ideology, and it has turned Art into a branch of Wall Street. I chose a 35,000 year-old tradition of painting as an alternative. I believe in sacred geometry, significant form, and the spirit resonance of color because I have seen them. Space, light and color reactions are used as a kind of retinal research in my work. By using multiple vanishing points I can see over many horizons. I seek the level of poetry and music in a tightly structured whole. I want to redo Rothko from nature." Warner Williams
Warner has stood on the outside of the art world for over 30 years - I have heard him criticize the art world and our current civilization many times. Warner calls his work "post-contemporary" to indicate his intention to make a break with an art world that hasn't grown in 50 years, and that he believes is based on an old, failed ideology. Warner is providing his answer to the discontents of our current civilization by creating a consistent body of work that unites classical techniques with the liberating energies of early modernism, cubism and abstract expressionism.
Weilding his mastery of the ancient skills - color reaction, sacred geometries, and mythopoetic content, Warner has created a bright and distorted reflection of the "state" of California, our Golden State, which has now gained an extraordinary body of oil paintings, visions of the beloved mundane, created in response to California's beauties and her horrors.
"I believe Contemporary Art is the new academy. It's 50 years old, and it is time to move on. It's based on a cynical and nihilistic ideology, and it has turned Art into a branch of Wall Street. I chose a 35,000 year-old tradition of painting as an alternative. I believe in sacred geometry, significant form, and the spirit resonance of color because I have seen them. Space, light and color reactions are used as a kind of retinal research in my work. By using multiple vanishing points I can see over many horizons. I seek the level of poetry and music in a tightly structured whole. I want to redo Rothko from nature." Warner Williams
