Rez Williams (1943–2024) lived and worked on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, four miles off the southeast coast of Massachusetts. He grew up in New York City and graduated with a degree in philosophy from Union College, where he studied painting under Harold Keller. He lived and painted on East 9th Street and later Eighth Avenue while he earned an MFA from New York University, in 1965.
His paintings have been featured in one-person exhibits at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine, and the New Bedford Museum of Art, along with residencies at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland, and the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York. The Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation in 2013 honored Williams with its Creative Living Award. He made his home in West Tisbury with his wife, the artist Lucy Mitchell.
In 2020–2021, the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation commissioned him to create a series of landscape paintings featuring iconic conservation properties on Martha’s Vineyard.
One-person exhibits
2012-2019 – A Gallery, Martha's Vineyard, MA
2011 – Shephard Fine ArtSpace, Martha's Vineyard, MA
2008 – Nye Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
2007 – Carol Craven Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
2001 – New Bedford Museum of Art, New Bedford, MA, “Working Boats: Portraits from a Fishing Harbor”
1994-2001 – Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
1999 – Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Maine, “Steel Walls & Waterlines”
1990-1993 – Field Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
1988 – Kornbluth Gallery, Fairlawn, NJ
1988 – Gay Head Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
1980-1988 – Artworkers Guild Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
“He paints out of West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard, but he’s about as far from one of those sticky-sweet chroniclers of island life and times as one can get. His scenes of the Vineyard smash into your eyes like crescendos. The spaces warp and move. The colors clash and rebound. You gaze at something like “Gay Head Light” for a few seconds and you get out of breath. Williams is light-years beyond the Vineyard, yet no one has distilled it better.”
— Thomas Hoving, late director, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Art for the Ages, Cigar Aficionado magazine, Summer 1999
Professional experience
2016-present – Ongoing exploration of Monhegan Island, ME
2014 – Fellowship, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, County Mayo, Ireland
2013 – Creative Living Award, Permanent Endowment for Martha's Vineyard (now the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation)
1995-present – Ongoing exploration of New Bedford’s working waterfront
1996 – Working trip to Venice, Italy, culminating in a series of city/waterscapes
1984 – Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY, Residency culminating in a series of landscapes
1966-1975 – Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ, Assistant Professor, Fine Arts
“Many of us have this sense of wonder about what the world has to offer up. But few of us have his ability to transform that wonder into great art.”
— Ruth Kirchmeier, artist