Visiting expat painter Sam Rountree Williams discusses his recent show, Dreamers, with his gallerist Robert Heald.
Robert Heald: You’ve been in Berlin for seven years now. This is the second time you’ve made it back to New Zealand for an exhibition. Why did you move overseas and what have you been doing since you’ve been away?
Sam Rountree Williams: I left in 2009. I’d finished Elam and was looking to do my master’s in Europe or the United States. I ended up at Düsseldorf Art Academy studying under Herbert Brandl, an Austrian painter. I was there for two semesters before returning briefly to New Zealand, then moved to London for two years. Eventually, I washed up in Berlin.
The work’s changed a lot. Before you left New Zealand, you were making abstract paintings with shells and spray paint. What brought on the change of style?
When I was in New Zealand, I was trying to hit this midpoint between abstraction and figuration. I found that unsustainable, and gradually became an abstract painter. By the time I was studying in Düsseldorf, I was making geometric abstract paintings, but I was also producing these cartoony, fast, free, funny figurative drawings. I realised I wanted to combine the colour and surface orientation of the abstraction with the humour of the figuration...
[To continue reading please click the PDF or web link below]
