M-Machine Number 2

These new paintings by Simon Mc Williams feature a coming together of paint and
subject matter. His title for the exhibition: The New Metropolis, is a deliberate allusion to
both fact and fantasy in our rapidly changing visual environment. The title prompts images of
Fritz Lang’s classic film and Pieter Brueghel’s Tower of Babel. Mc Williams, however, in his
creations, utilizes the powerful strangeness of the New City yet clothes it in such resplendent
colour that we experience the majesty of the Tower rather than its dehumanizing characteris-
tics.
His medium coalesces with the forms he is creating. He implants new energy into the
paint which enlivens and becomes part of, the newly emerging buildings. The lush fecundity of
the pigment gives birth to some startling structures and yet, one is aware of the drawing skills
which underpin these edifices of paint.