Walking with Faith and Hope
John williamson
High-resolution digital image print and encaustic, 11 x 14 inches (printed on Hahnamuhle Bayata Photo Rag paper with Epson Archival inks).
Collection of the artist
Special thanks to R&F paints of Kingston, New York for sponsoring encaustic materials.
Made possible by a grant from the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, Art for Uncertain Times.
The COVID-19 World is a place none of us picked…
I’ve walked with prosthetic legs and crutches my entire life (due to a birth defect). The concept of “mobility” has always been part of my thought process. In this work, Walking with Faith and Hope, I’m specifically thinking about my uncertain times as well as the current Coronavirus situation.
Even with my condition, I’ve been blessed to be a “high functioning” person. While I’ve had physical challenges, I’ve pushed myself to adapt to a “normal” business world. I’ve worked for prominent technology companies, often traveling worldwide more than 100,000 miles annually for business needs.
Four years ago my physical challenges caught up with me and I couldn’t work in the same way for my employers. I am now using a power wheelchair most of the time. I’ve been pushed, metaphorically kicking and screaming, into a disabled world that surprisingly is far beyond my conscious planning! Mobility is now a much more uncertain situation for me.
In my image, Walking with Faith and Hope, I see myself “walking” through an uncertain world filled with symbols of garish colors, tree shadows, falling buildings (for me, an homage to the 9/11 attacks), and dangerous uneven footing and terrain.
But I’ve carried a camera with me for my entire life. I’ve kept images from my business travels that I now consider as assets and components for new digital creations and encaustic wax art. Walking with Faith and Hope was created using a few of these assets. Digital imagery and encaustic wax art are both new mediums for me. Art has become my “therapy” for coping in an uncertain world I did not choose. The uncertainty of the “Covid-19 world” is a place none of us picked. This makes life even more unsettled. —John Williamson, 2020
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john williamson
is a “self-taught, emerging artist” who retired from the corporate business world after becoming limited in his physical mobility. While his encaustic studio space is “only a repurposed desk in a corner of his unfinished basement” and his hip pain limits him from the number of hours he can work daily, he is constantly inspired to create. His digital art & sketchbooks are always within arm’s reach.
Years ago Williamson completed his degree in communication at the Salt Lake Art Center (now the Finch Street Gallery) and later went on to receive a business degree. LDS Church photographer, Don O. Thorpe, is credited as a mentor, and Williamson has earned photography merit, including winning a worldwide Nikon contest in 2008. His photograph—a slow shutter speed image of the ice rink at Rockefeller Center in NYC—indicates Williamson’s interest in finding movement amidst stillness, layered collage, “asemic language” art, and encaustic abstractions.
For more about the artist or his online gallery, see @wmson2004_art .