Sean Williams

My paintings are views of the fringes of suburbia, places that feel as though they are familiar, but then escape our conditioned response. I aim to place the viewer as ‘still points of a turning world’ – alone, for a while, then possibly watched as they look on. The scene switches between mundane – what is evident and what impacts on our environment, and how we barely see it -and suggesting something may be about to happen. Whilst site works and temporary installations significantly modify landscapes, we often don’t acknowledge that, or how it impacts on our lives. My aim is to identify miniscule but defining details in aspects of suburbia and its edgelands that may reveal something of the modern human condition. The locations portrayed in my paintings represent the in-between spaces of everyday life. Factual and symbolic, the subject matter often relates to states of being and feeling that can be as unfixed, open to question and awaiting definition as any geographical locale featured.


Sean was born in North Wales in 1966 and is based at Bloc Studios in Sheffield. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Mountain Size’ at Pineapple Black, Middlesbrough curated by Gordon Dalton; ‘Made in Britain’ at the National Museum of Poland in Gdansk; ‘Contemporary Masters from Britain’ at Tianjin Academy of Fine Art in China, and ‘Thirty Four Painters’ at Norwich Cathedral. His painting ‘Our Bloody Hell’ is currently on show in the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, and recently took part in ‘Beyond Other Horizons’ at Iasi Palace of Culture, Romania in March 2020. He is also co-founder of Prosaic curatorial group.

artist’s website