Saul Williams
Saul Williams - Artist Biography
Saul Williams is a Canadian Indigenous painter and graphic artist. Born in North Caribou Lake, Ontario, Canada in 1954, his family moved to Weagamow Lake to live on the North Caribou Lake First Nation Reserve, where he would become a Band member.
In the summer of 1968, Williams met Dr. Mary Black. Williams and his friends would do chores and translation work for Black. Noticing that Williams was often doodling and sketching, Black purchased tubes of acrylic paint for him and later allowed him to decorate her wall with a stylized raven, paying him five dollars for the piece. This painting is now a part of the Royal Ontario Museum collection.
Williams was largely self-taught. He attended school until grade eight and took art education classes at the Elliot Lake Summer School in 1970. In 1971, Williams held his first show at York University in Toronto. Other exhibitions followed, including those at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (1974, 1976, 1977, 1983); the Oakville Centennial Gallery, Ontario (1974); the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario (1978 and 1979); and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (1984). The AGO show was one of the first exhibitions of Indigenous art at the institution.
For the last 30 years, Williams has worked full-time as Education Director at the North Caribou Lake Education Authority. He works closely with parents and the community leadership, he continues to advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous language, traditions, and culture in the curriculum. He still paints but considers it more of a hobby.
Williams' works are held in private and public collections including the Royal Ontario Museum; the McMichael Canadian Art Collection; the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec; New College, University of Toronto; the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario and the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Ontario.
Selected Exhibitions
1974: Contemporary Native Art of Ontario, The Oakville Centennial Gallery, ON
1976: Contemporary Native Art of Canada -The Woodland Indians, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON
1978: Art of the Woodland Indian, The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg, ON
1979: Kinder des Nanabush, from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection for Hamburg, West Germany
1983: Last Camp, First Song: Indian Art from the Royal Ontario Museum, organized by the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, ON
1984: Norval Morrisseau and the Image Makers, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
2009: The Woodland School, The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg, ON
2017: Anishinaabeg: Art & Power. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Permanent Collections:
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario, Canada
The Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada
New College, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Woodland Cultural Centre, Brantford, Ontario, Canada
The Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Ontario, Canada
Artist Specialization: Williams creates rich surfaces, using white as positive colour and not just background. The entire picture plane is utilized, broken up and filled with warm colours, ornate linear notations, and symbolic flourishes. At the same time that Morrisseau was executing painted floral designs inspired by Ojibwe beadwork, Williams was creating images of jewel-like colours and flamboyant formlines. There is a dream-like intensity in his work that invites the viewer to simply get lost in it.
