Artists directory

Josie

Williams

Working across printmaking, sculpture and water-based media, I create hybrid forms and imagined worlds that explore how bodies, materials and environments shape one another. At the centre of my practice is an interest in connection: between body and landscape, memory and material, fragility and endurance. My work is rooted in close observation of natural processes: growth, decay, weathering, adaptation and renewal, and in the ways these processes can become carriers of memory, emotion and meaning. In printmaking, I work primarily through a subtractive dark-field process, gradually wiping back, reworking and layering inked surfaces until figures and landscapes begin to emerge. This intuitive, materially responsive approach allows images to develop through discovery rather than fixed design. The same principle extends into my sculptural work, where I use fragile and organic materials for the bodily, sensory and symbolic associations they hold. Through tearing, staining, dyeing, burning and weathering, I alter these materials until they appear marked by time and experience. My work draws on the language of folklore, natural history and speculative storytelling, not to illustrate fixed narratives, but to create spaces in which meanings can gather. Human, animal and environmental forms become entangled, creating ambiguous figures, fragments and habitats that resist simple classification. I aim to make work that feels both strange and familiar, inviting reflection on our relationship with the living world.

Disciplines: Mixed Media

Location: Neilston

Materials: Assemblage, Etching, Found, Lithography, Modelling, Monoprint, Oil, Paper, Pastel, Pen & Ink, Pencil, Relief Print, Watercolour

Working across printmaking, sculpture and water-based media, I create hybrid forms and imagined worlds that explore how bodies, materials and environments shape one another. At the centre of my practice is an interest in connection: between body and landscape, memory and material, fragility and endurance. My work is rooted in close observation of natural processes: growth, decay, weathering, adaptation and renewal, and in the ways these processes can become carriers of memory, emotion and meaning. In printmaking, I work primarily through a subtractive dark-field process, gradually wiping back, reworking and layering inked surfaces until figures and landscapes begin to emerge. This intuitive, materially responsive approach allows images to develop through discovery rather than fixed design. The same principle extends into my sculptural work, where I use fragile and organic materials for the bodily, sensory and symbolic associations they hold. Through tearing, staining, dyeing, burning and weathering, I alter these materials until they appear marked by time and experience. My work draws on the language of folklore, natural history and speculative storytelling, not to illustrate fixed narratives, but to create spaces in which meanings can gather. Human, animal and environmental forms become entangled, creating ambiguous figures, fragments and habitats that resist simple classification. I aim to make work that feels both strange and familiar, inviting reflection on our relationship with the living world.

Previous Experience

I am an emerging artist based in East Renfrewshire. I graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2026 with a BA (Hons) Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking, having previously completed Portfolio Preparation at GSA in 2023. Selected group exhibitions include Delicious, The Pipe Factory, Glasgow (2023); Squeeze, Reid Gallery, Glasgow (2024); One Fold, Strange Field, Glasgow (March 2025); Mother Curator, Reid Gallery, Glasgow (January 2026); Folklore and Fairytales, Stow Building, Glasgow (June 2026); and the Glasgow School of Art Degree Show (2026). Forthcoming: Things Carried Over, two-person exhibition, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow (February 2027). I am a member of Glasgow Print Studio, Saltspace, Visual Arts Scotland, New Glasgow Society and Imprint.

Collections

Dark Landscape

Dark Field Monotypes

Mixed media works

Not yet a member?

We are committed as a society to supporting and exhibiting a diverse range of contemporary Scottish art, in a wide variety of media – including drawing, painting, printmaking, textiles, photography, jewellery, ceramics and sculpture.

View our membership packages for more information and to sign-up.

Migrate to Stripe

Visual Arts Scotland memberships are now processed through Stripe. If you have been paying by bank transfer or PayPal we request that you switch your subscription to our new system to ensure continuity of membership.

Your card will not be charged until the renewal date of your membership.