Theresa’s studio is a series of vignettes, combined in a space to design a feast for the eyes, as all of her landscapes simultaneously draw you in and transport you to a time and a place.
It is fitting that her work was lined up like the horizons they represented, each with a consistency in practice but a uniqueness in location.
“You're always moving through,” Williams remarked,
“into, through, and out of those landscapes.”
Williams said she always wanted to be a landscape painter, she knew that from the very beginning.
In fact, she had been accepted into the Emily Carr College of Art, when the college was still a college and located on Granville Island.
But here’s the surprising thing—they rarely took the students outside. The program didn’t resonate with her, and she moved on, promising she would pick painting back up in the future.
Thirty-five years later, she did.
“The way I look at it, I think I've spent 35 years procrastinating, saying, ‘Oh, I'm going to get back to painting again. I'll teach myself how to paint.’
“But finally, after 35 years, I realized if I'm going to keep talking about doing this, well, I better start, because 35 years has gone by in the blink of an eye.
“So I started painting and went out, bought a few supplies, and of course, once you start buying supplies—well, then you buy more supplies.”
Williams laughed, then pointed out that anyone wishing to get into painting is best to just spend the ten thousand dollars in supplies and really commit.
Dare I say that after that 35-year hiatus, she came back to painting with a vengeance.
Although she describes herself as self-taught, it would suffice to say that her inherent talent shines through in the way she views the world, the landscapes, and strives for growth within her skill set.
From long plein air sessions to transcribing warm paintings from grayscale images, Williams works hard to push her talents into greater and greater landscapes.
Recently, she has moved from oils to acrylics, changing her medium in many ways but preserving the same beautiful style.
“Working my way through a painting, there will always be stages where I really don't like it. And I've learned to let that go and just ride that through, and not worry as much about it.
“With the acrylics, it's a little easier to deal with those ugly stages because they don't impact as much of what I'm doing moving forward.”
Regardless of the paint she is using, Williams never fails to capture the light in her own way—elegant, transporting, and ultimately divine.
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