Vivienne Williams RCA

Vivienne Williams was born in Swansea in 1955. She studied English Literature at Reading University taking a Masters Degree in ‘The Literary Response to the Visual Arts’ in 1978. She spent the next five years abroad, teaching English in Venice and Padua and working in an art gallery in Sydney, where she began selling her work for the first time. Returning to the UK in 1983, she spent the next seven years studying and working in a Buddhist Community, before returning to Wales in 1990 and committing to painting full time.

Vivienne has acquired a large and loyal following having exhibited over the last thirty years with regular solo shows in Cardiff and London.  A prize-winner at the National Eisteddfod in 1993, Vivienne also went onto receive a highly commended prize at the inaugural Welsh Artist of the Year Competition in Cardiff in 2000. Furthermore, she was invited onto the panel of Judges in 2008. Her work has been purchased by the Contemporary Art Society of Wales, and can be found in many Public and Private Collections to include: Carmarthen County Hall, Swansea University Library and the World Trade Centre, Cardiff.

She has been described by Artist Sarah Bradford as “a brilliant and contemplative colourist..……there are so many gorgeous things going on compositionally – surfaces, colours, shapes…her work is calm and quiet, giving up its’ secrets gently, rewarding you for a long time”.

As Andrew Green, the former Head of the National Library of Wales writes, the paintings ‘possess a determined search for harmony: not just a visual harmony, but a corresponding human harmony, a learned stillness of mind. Vivienne has long been influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, which emphasises the importance of achieving tranquillity through removing mental obstruction. Her paintings are more than self-complete formal compositions. They do hold an intent, for those open to their invitation’.

Vivienne Williams has been represented by Thackeray Gallery since 2014.