about
Born on Treaty Six territory in Alberta, Patricia Rose Williams now lives on Salt Spring Island, the shared, traditional, unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the Hul’qumi’num and Sencoten speaking peoples. Patricia Rose Williams is a nehiyaw-Métis artist whose work explores themes of ancestral memory, cultural identity, land-based relationships, and resilience. Working primarily in fused glass, textiles, botanical printing, and photography, she blends traditional Métis material arts with contemporary techniques, creating layered, symbolic works that honor Wahkohtowin (the interconnectedness of all life).
In addition to working with textiles, beading and printmaking, Patricia finds that fused glass offers a direct and intense connection to working with light and capturing a sense of the sacred in the natural world. The rich colours and beauty of traditional Metis glass beads is echoed and reflected in her contemporary fused glass creations. She is currently exploring mixed media work blending glass beads, fused glass, and acrylic painting. The blown glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly and Sheila Hicks’ brilliantly coloured, large scale textile sculptures also inspire her current studio work.
artist statement
Why do I make art… and why do I make art that honours the natural world?
Is it because my Métis blood carries memories from both my Cree and my Celtic ancestors… people who understood their place in Nature and revered the Creator and honoured the Earth herself? The poet Rilke said, “If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted like trees.”
Did my rural Alberta upbringing indelibly imprint upon me the wonder of life – the profound beauty, and the tenacity and fragility that was reflected in the people, the plants, and the animals of the prairies?
Or is it because I now live in one of the most beautiful places I know, and the cedars and Salish Sea have made their way into my bones and blood? Is it possible that I cannot help but create art to honour the divine, ancient energy that pulses in the web of our beautiful island home?
Do I make art because I have experienced the profound healing power of creative expression, both personally and professionally as an art therapist? I integrate art-making into my workshops because bringing creativity, mindfulness and compassion to ourselves is essential if we are to bring compassion to our dear Earth and all its inhabitants.
Do I make this nature-inspired art to share the awe I feel in the liminal spaces between land and sea, sea and sky, the microscopic and the macro, the specific and that which is universal, including the sacred, fractal patterns that echo throughout all living things? I learned recently that my Cree and Métis ancestors had a name for the interconnectedness of all things – “Wahkohtowin” – a natural law and worldview pointing to the profound interrelated nature of all beings (living and non-living), and of all systems, including our human families and communities. The circle is a common metaphor for understanding Wahkohtowin and I wonder if that is why it is so prevalent in my art?
I don’t know if these questions are pointing toward an answer for why the creative fire burns most brightly for me in the sacred space of Nature… However, what I do know is that that art-making is “the holy work,’…the real work, the work we were meant to do, the work that makes us whole.” – Phil Cousineau.
Métis leader Louis Riel said, “My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.”
Ojibway writer Richard Wagamese says there is hope for art: “Write, then. Paint. Sing. Act. Play. Raise through art the gamut of our collective humanity, our burgeoning spirit, so that Creator might see Herself in everything and smile.”
