MARTY WALKER GALLERY
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Marty Walker Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Sarah Williams' new urban landscapes of industrial American roadsides. Draped in the shadows of night, buzzing electric lights from commercial structures penetrate the scene. Emphasizing a sense of abandonment, the looming structures appear as vulnerable as they are threatening.

Williams' paintings take cues from Edward Hopper's geometric division of space and sense of isolation, yet leaves the scene absent of human figures. Photographically inspired, Williams provides a sardonic twist to a banal New Topographic landscape after sunset. Despite representing common daily activities, the overall scene takes on a sense of desolation flooded in electric light. Textured pavement overtakes the foreground, following tire tracks to seemingly unremarkable structures. Mixes of colored lights cast eerie reflections in hyper-realistic scenes, dramatizing the scene as if waiting for the next rush of movement.

Recently featured in the last October issue of New American Paintings, juror Cassandra Coblentz, Curator for the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, states of the selected artists: "Boldly building upon the richness of art history, their demonstrations of reinvention and innovation are in step with the mythos of the landscape itself, which continues to serve as an important backdrop for exploring the most pressing issues and concerns we all face in the West."

Sarah Williams received an MFA in 2009 from University of North Texas and has been exhibiting widely across
Texas and the U.S., and is the recipient of numerous awards, including Purchase Award from UNT's Art in
Public Places in 2009 and a Hunting Art Prize Finalist in 2010. She has exhibited and participated in a panel for
the Dallas Contemporary’s Here, There & Beyond, and recently completed an artist-in-residence program in
Vermont. Williams recently exhibited at the Galveston Arts Center, and had a solo exhibition at the Albrecht-
Kemper Museum of Art in 2010.


Image courtesy of Marty Walker Gallery.