Art - Amy Williams

The Chalk Gallery in North Street is currently full of farmyard animals. Every three weeks the gallery chooses a ‘featured artist’ and this month it is the turn of Amy Williams, who specialises in pen and ink paintings of cows, pigs and cockerels. If you think this sounds twee, you haven’t seen one of her paintings. Amy’s animals aren’t in anyway Disneyfied - though we suspect that they are becoming slightly more anthropomorphic as time goes on. They have attitude. They look you in the eye, and dare you to come closer. You wouldn’t want to meet one of Amy’s cows in a narrow twitten after dark.

You may remember Amy from the picture she painted for us of a turkey, which we used as the cover of the Xmas edition of the Viva Lewes Handbook. We have long wanted to use one of her cows on the cover of this web magazine, and, of course, Amy was the author of the picture we have chosen this week. “I love the strong bony structures of cows, their shape, their colours,” she says. “I love the fantastic relationship between line and mass. I’ve always found they have incredible presence.” Her designs, inspired by Durer, are outlined in ink with a nib and coloured with an brush. She then splatters the paper with water, to make the ink splash and run. The effect is highly striking: whilst she doesn’t quite personify the animals she draws, she certainly gives them plenty of personality. AL