Brian R. Williams
Brian Williams
Drawing /
Painting
My drawings reconnect with the magic of nature by reimagining the past. The animals in my drawings represent the primitive, emotional or mysterious parts of our humanity that have been obscured by the veneer of civilization and technological advancement. I often choose extinct or endangered animals to feature in my drawings. In some drawings, like those in the Dead Monarch Masquerade series, I pair an extinct animal with an assassinated monarch, such as Czar Nicholas II or Marie Antoinette, who are shown wearing costumes of extinct animals. Generally, though, animals in my drawings are meant to emphasize nature's delicate preciousness, how human interference has threatened our planet's beauty and diversity, and how, by turning our backs on nature, we have lost connection to our ancient heritage.
I like to play with surrealistic juxtapositions of animals in a man-made environment - sometimes posing as a person or replacing man-made technology - to illustrate the ways people and animals are similar but also to create unusual, humorous or vaguely unsettling images. In my Whaleplanes series, I replaced warplanes with dolphins and whales, trading inventions of destruction for a mythical pacifist alternate reality where peaceful ocean mammals float harmlessly above the landscape. In other drawings I focus on times when human history clashed with natural history, such as Extinct Birds, which shows birds that have gone extinct as a result of direct human interference. I depicted the birds dressed in clothing that was fashionable during the year that they went extinct as a way of visually connecting the animal's history with our own.
Daguerreosaurs reimagines a past where humans and dinosaurs coexist; I've drawn famous Americans from history posing with their dinosaur companions.
In other drawings, I envision an alternate universe where animals have taken the place of humans, like in my Explorers and The Gilded Age series. For The Gilded Age, I replaced the human subjects in the photos with animals as a way to illustrate character traits - such as fearful, enigmatic, mournful, dominant or pitiable - that we often also associate with animals. The animals in these drawings become visible manifestations of these traits underneath the domesticated "gilding" that humans have cultivated to mask their primal, animalistic nature.
Images
- I allow businesses to purchase or display my work.
- I am open to selling my work under payment plans.
- I am available for demonstrations.