Enid Kay Williams’s painting style has been described as a synthesis of Op Art and Abstract Expressionism. Typically, her work is presented in square formats and consists of brightly colored circles which reverberate visually. In an artist statement she articulated her approach: “My work reflects a long standing interest in a vocabulary of semi-circular shapes that explore the possibilities of shifting configurations in pictorial space and optical occurrences. Changing dichotomies such as the notion of static time and change, absence and presence are among the coexisting themes I continue to explore, often referenced in titles.” While many of her paintings—both in oil and acrylic—and her monotypes are untitled, others have more evocative names such as Elastic Collision, Scatter Shot, and Auto Scramble.
Williams was born in Midland, Texas, and grew up in Stephenville, southwest of Fort Worth. In 1984 she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Tarleton State University, located in Stephenville. She migrated east, to the University of Toledo, in Ohio, where she obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1992, and then to Kent State University where she got her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1996. Williams has had extensive teaching experience; from 1999 to 2001 at the University of Akron in Ohio where she taught drawing, two-dimensional design, and painting, and at Youngstown State University, 1988–2004 teaching similar subjects. She has been an assistant professor, first at Kent State University, 2001–2004, and then after moving to South Carolina in 2004, at Greenville Technical College. She has also been an adjunct instructor for drawing at nearby Furman University. While in Ohio she married fellow artist Paul Yanko.
Reviewers of Williams’s work have used such words as “kinetic circles,” “particles interwoven in a primarily white void,” “optical complexity and spatial ambiguity” and “meticulously rendered images.” She has countered with the following explanation: “The practice of layering and subtracting the physical surface allows a more nuanced treatment of shape and color to emerge. The resulting spatial quality is an image that continues to appear in continual flux and is ambiguous in nature.”