An Artist Is Finding Out Who She Is Through Her Art
This article is part of our Museums special section about how institutions are striving to offer their visitors more to see, do and feel.
The painter Robin F. Williams once thought that she would be a children’s book illustrator. Her career and her personal evolution took her in a very different direction, but she kept some of the stylistic aspects of her first artistic aspiration. “I think I learned a lot about my identity through making art,” said Williams, 40, who lives in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint.
She identifies as queer, bisexual, pansexual and nonbinary, and uses both “she” and “they” pronouns. Williams has impressed other artists with her slyly funny, graphically sophisticated scenes that often depict female subjects with an eye to upending the traditional “male gaze” power dynamic.
Working in both oil and acrylic, she has experimented with different ways of applying and adjusting paint, sometimes using a silicone dish sponge, other times creatively wielding an airbrush. “Robin is a savant with materials,” said Jenna Gribbon, her friend and fellow painter.
