last of its kind, imagine
her
the last woman
the last woman
the last of it all,
and of every one
last of all,
and last of every thing
last of it all
of color
of feeling
last of all
that ever was, imagine
the last
ever
to pick up a stone
to throw a stone
imagine,
all as no more,
ever again
no woman
no color
no feeling
no figure
no vessel
nothing
imagine,
nothing.

- Alexander Tovborg (© Alexander Tovborg for ART 3 gallery - June 20, 2016)

Transcending the whispers of local folklore and urban legend, Justin Williams’s artworks are raw, subversive, and primal while simultaneously being idyllic, mystical, and sublime. His imagery includes expressionistically rendered figures and animals often engulfed with luscious and vibrantly jewel toned foliage. The artist grew up living and working in the Dandenong Ranges just east of east of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Known for its towering Mountain Ash trees and sheltered fern gullies, this mild and wet mountain range and rainforest covers the remains of an extinct volcano. This topography, that of unruly bramble and dew on leaves just after a thunderstorm features heavily in Williams’s paintings.  Perhaps an outsider, definitely an observer, Williams’s draws from both personal experience and that of the community—a town’s resident oddballs and verbal histories. Finding their way in, like a glimpse out the corner of your eye, or a vivid remnant of a recent dream, these narratives weave through his work, a tumbling id tempered by the artist’s definitive vision. This tension of universal with particular can often be seen through Williams’s pictorial rendering. Figures will have a distinctive wrist or knotted ankle while peering out through a masked or mistily veiled face, having a briskly drawn torso, or hauntingly transparent limb. However poetically universal their appeal, the curiously specific details and stories of Williams’s cast of characters makes them utterly unique. 

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