Interiors: Margaux Williamson

Margaux Williamson is a painter for our times. The global pandemic has not only reshaped our relationships with friends and family, home life and work life, but it has also changed our feelings about familiar places. Williamson’s work, made before and during the pandemic, expresses curiosity and wonder toward everyday spaces and objects.

The exhibition includes works that focus on three familiar settings: her studio, her home, and the bar. She is attuned and analytical in how she represents these spaces, but she is also disruptive. An archivist of sorts, she builds files of “text sketches”—phrases, lists, dream fragments, along with photographs, torn magazine images, and drawings—which inform her images. Residing in the real world but without allegiance to the tradition of realism, Williamson offers new ways of seeing and experiencing reality, capturing both the familiarity and strangeness of today’s world.  Margaux Williamson is a Toronto-based artist and writer. Guest Curated by Jessica Bradley. Organized and circulated by McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Margaux Williamson (b. 1976) is a Toronto painter and writer who also makes videos. She appears as a character in Sheila Heti’s acclaimed novel How Should a Person Be? and has collaborated with Heti and others to enliven her artistic community with readings, performances, and musical events.

Williamson completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Queen’s University, Kingston, and was the recipient of an exchange scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Toronto; London, UK; and New York.

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