Elm City, North Carolina native, K.P. Williams is an African-American self-taught painter who grew up in a farming family
and now teaches English at Wilson Technical Community College. Following her mother's lead in drawing and sketching, Williams has taught herself to work with brush and color in watercolor and acrylic. Inspired by artists such as Georgia O'Keefe, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Romare Bearden, and Jacob Lawrence, Williams developed a personal vision for close-up texture and bold shapes and design that reflect her love of music, dance, nature, flowers, and geometric design. Williams has exhibited locally and has sold pictures to Text Art Publishing Company and the Pen and Press Company and to private collectors.

A Barton College graduate with a B.S. in Communications and a Masters of Education from East Carolina, Williams is a successful academic professional, but thankful for a second chance at life after surviving kidney failure, her life goals have become more urgent and artistic. Fortunate to have a perfectly matched transplant kidney from her husband in 1999, Williams wasted no time during her six-month recovery to teach herself the basics of painting. The public library with its instruction books became her personal art school, and she practiced how to show depth and shade the subjects in her pictures. With her vision she prefers to transform ordinary things into extraordinary pictorial subjects; this is especially evident in her still life pictures that express the weights and textures of the depicted subject.

K.P. Williams has competed successfully in the Rocky Mount Art Center's Juried Exhibition in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Collectors are taking notice and are buying her paintings; she has recently been featured in a two-woman exhibition of her artwork at the Four Sisters Gallery for Self-Taught Artists at the Mims Gallery at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, NC, where she has sold some of her pieces to private collectors.

Mims Gallery- Four Sisters Gallery for Self-taught Artists Wesleyan College

Two-woman show - October 25, 2002 through February 22, 2003

Four Sisters Gallery for Self-Taught Artists

Mims Gallery on Wesleyan College Campus, Rocky Mount, NC

EXHIBITS

December 2002

Wilson Technical Community College--Donated Art for Christmas Raffle

May 2002

Rocky Mount Arts Center Juried Exhibition

September 2001

North Carolina Community College System Art Exhibition

May 2001

Rocky Mount Arts Center Juried Exhibition

May 2000

Rocky Mount Arts Center Juried Exhibition

October 1997

Down East Festival Crafts Fair, Rocky Mount

CORPORATE COLLECTORS

Wilson Technical Community College, Wilson, NC

Text-Art Publishing, Rocky Mount, NC

Pen & Press, Durham, NC