Philemona Williamson

Philemona Williamson’s narrative paintings explore the tenuous bridge between adolescence and adulthood, encapsulating the intersection of innocence and experience at its most piercing and poignant moment.

She has shown widely, with solo shows at June Kelly Gallery in New York, Jenkins-Johnson Gallery in San Francisco, a 2017 mid-career retrospective at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey and solos show at Galerie Semiose in Paris.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including The Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, National Endowment For The Arts, New York Foundation For The Arts and The Millay Colony. In 2022, she received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was awarded the Anonymous Was A Woman grant.

She is represented in numerous private and public collections, including The Montclair Art Museum; The Kalamazoo Art Institute; The Mint Museum of Art; Smith College Museum of Art; Hampton University Museum; Sheldon Art Museum; Mott-Warsh Art Collection, AT&T and The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection.

Her public works include fused-glass murals created for the MTA Arts in Transit Program at the Livonia Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, a painting used by the MTA’s Poetry In Motion and, for the NYC School Authority, a mosaic mural in Queens. She created a series of paintings for the children’s book “Lubaya’s Quiet Roar” from Penguin Random House.

Philemona has taught Painting & Drawing at Hunter College, Pratt Institute, SVA, Bard College, RISD, Cooper Union and Parsons as well as serving on the advisory board of the Getty Center for Education and is currently on the board of directors of Doing Art Together as well as The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.