Since graduating
from City Art Institute in Sydney with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1984, Julie
Williams has been an exhibiting artist and photographer.
Williams started
her career as a painter then switched to photography. Although the move to pick up a camera happened a long time ago, there is
still a strong painterly foundation to her work.
Williams loves photographing water and says the movement
and the way light plays on and through its surface is something she never tires
of:
"The sense of awe from nature is powerful and
I look to capture this within my work. As I look through the camera at an area
of water the size of a human hand I press the shutter to seize vast,
unfathomable landscapes from the flow," she says.
Water is a universal
metaphor for the passage of time, death and renewal. For Williams this is a
very personal metaphor and one reason for photographing a particular river
close to her home.
When First I Knew This Place is a series of
photographs taken of the waters of the River Lett, at a place called Hyde Park,
in the Hartley Valley, between Lithgow and the Blue Mountains in New South
Wales. The photos also tell a story of a woman’s grief and healing.
Williams' images are created the moment the shutter is
pressed. There is no cropping or manipulation. Williams chooses long
shutter speeds and says all it takes is
one speck of light, given enough time to move through the frame, to create an
illuminated brushstroke. The photographs capture the essence of the wildness
and the unpredictability of nature creating images that viewers often perceive
to be paintings.
Julie Williams will
be exhibiting a selection of her work from ‘When First I Knew this Place’ in a
duo show titled Water Magicians, at Syndicate at Danks – 2 Danks Street,
Waterloo, Sydney – from 27 June to 14 July 2012.
See more of Julie
Williams’ work at www.juliewilliams.net.au
