Making Every Moment Count: Elaine Williamson’s Modern Quilts

from Art and Color 365 | March/April 2023

Anne Redpath

Inspired by the beauty found in nature, Elaine Williamson has created a stunning collection of modern quilts while balancing the demands of a career and homelife.

Elaine Williamson is a woman of many accomplishments. On the home front, she has raised two daughters, enjoys her three grandchildren, and is celebrating her 61st wedding anniversary this year.

As a U.S. Army nurse, and wife of an Air Force pilot and officer, she saw much of the world, living in different areas of the U.S. and Europe, including Norway and Sweden.

She also earned three academic degrees along the way: a bachelor’s in nursing, a master’s in counseling, and a doctorate in psychology, which led to establishing her own family counseling practice, and teaching personal development and counseling classes at four universities.

An impressive resumé. Yet, even with all of these achievements, Williamson found spare moments to enjoy one of her favorite pursuits: quilting.

Quilting as artistic expression

As a child, she saw quilts her aunt had sewn and it piqued her interest. Years later, she decided to learn more about the craft, so she took a quilting lesson and has been creating original designs ever since. Among these are a number of traditional quilts, but her special talent lies in piecing fabrics of myriad hues into stunning abstract and representational works, drawing inspiration from landscapes and animals. While Williamson’s modern quilts can be used as beautiful bed coverings, they might be better suited to display as artistic wall hangings.

Elephant quilt design

A photograph Williamson saw in a magazine inspired her to create this beautiful and complex quilt. Over two years, she matched fabrics to colors in the photo to create a striking image of an African elephant.

Using a variety of patterns and values — darker fabrics to simulate shadows and lighter to convey a sense of sunlight — the animal’s contours come to life as carefully placed patterns sculpt the shape of the elephant’s head, ears, body, and trunk. Closeup views reveal abstract textures in shades of gray, brown, and gold.

Blue herons quilt

Williamson didn’t need a photograph for inspiration to create her Blue Herons quilt; it originated entirely in her imagination before it took form in fabric. The colorful tones and placement of abstract shapes in this piece are reminiscent of stainedglass art.

Abstract floral bouquet quilt

Equally impressive is Williamson’s exquisite quilt with abstract floral imagery. Pieced and sewn from more than 250 squares of fabric, this masterwork incorporates values ranging from light, subtle colors and patterns to more brilliant hues and shapes in light blue, yellow, crimson, and evergreen. A closeup look reveals fabric squares showing tree branches, abstract designs, and cleverly placed floral patterns that form butterflies and inventive flowers across the fabric.

Landscape Quilt

Inspired by the natural beauty of Colorado Springs, Colorado, the city where she and her husband retired, Williamson created this beautiful landscape. The imagery is taken from the cadmium redhued sandstone rock formations in Garden of the Gods Park, situated in the foothills below Pikes Peak, one of Colorado’s most iconic fourteener mountains.

Piecing together time and quilts

When talking about the elements of quilting that she loves most, Williamson says she enjoys selecting a diverse assortment of fabrics and keeping them sorted by color in her quilting cabinet.

“I also love to be busy with my hands and not waste time, so even when we went on cruises to Europe, Austria, and New Zealand, I’d always take a packet of fabric along so I could work on quilts.”

When quilting at home, she discovered pool table created a perfect workstation for whenever she had a free moment. When addressing how she had to find time for quilting with her incredibly busy personal and professional schedule, Williamson says, “Every quilt was like a project in suspension; I’d just work on them whenever I could.”

For Williamson, piecing together bits of time to create her quilts was as integral a part of the creative process as piecing together the fabric. Given the originality and beauty of her work, it has certainly been a successful and inspiring journey.

Danh Nguyen

Rendered only with a ballpoint pen, Danh Nguyen's sketchbooks are a personal journal celebrating his friends and the things that move him.

In late 1979, when five-year-old Danh Nguyen (pronounced “Yawn Noo-wen”) was emigrating from Laos to the United States with his Vietnamese war refugee parents, he could never have guessed where his life journey was leading him.

His first few years in America were focused on fitting in with American kids — his appearance, learning the language, and adjusting to an entirely new diet. Nguyen says, “I remember the first time I tried pizza and, having never eaten cheese before, I was repulsed; and Sloppy Joes in the school cafeteria weirded me out. But I was stunned by how good peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were!”

“Once, my mother wanted to make American food at home for me and my siblings,” Nguyen continues, “so she tried her hand at spaghetti sauce. When she tasted it, she felt it was lacking something, so she did what most Vietnamese would do — she added fish sauce, which is a flavor enhancer for almost everything in Vietnamese cooking. Needless to say,” he laughs, “that spaghetti sauce was just ... off. But that’s what inspired my Instagram handle, @fishsaucespaghettisauce.” (By the way, Nguyen now thinks pizza is “pretty awesome!”)

Currently, Nguyen works in New York City as a scenic artist in the film and television industry, painting background sets for TV shows, movies, and theater. “I started drawing in sketchbooks religiously after my move to the New York metro area,” Nguyen says. “Penn Station and Grand

Central were my stomping grounds to find subjects to draw. My early drawings were loose, quick, spontaneous, and drawn from life.”

“What I love most about sketchbooks is that they’re like an unlimited world of blank canvases,” he continues. “If I don’t like the direction of one thing I’m working on, I simply flip the page and work on something else. More than anything, I appreciate the simplicity of sketchbook art. It’s low mess, inexpensive, and direct, not like the more complex elements of painting.”

Nguyen uses only oil-based ballpoint pens and Moleskine sketchbooks because he likes the way the pens glide on this paper, and he feels they are more sensitive than gel pens. Currently he uses two pen brands: a Caran d’Ache ballpoint pen and a Bic Cristal .04mm pen.

As his drawing evolved, Nguyen decided to turn his sketches into more detailed drawings using a technique which involves making thousands of tiny pen strokes in every sketch. But the time and patience needed to use this technique presented a dilemma.

“I wanted to draw my friends,” Nguyen says, “but none of us have hours to spare to create a drawing from life, so I decided to work from photographs, and found I enjoy working this way. I’m drawing the people I feel closest to and, as I study their faces carefully for hours as I work, I feel like I’m meditating on who each one is as a human being.” He describes these insights in his Instagram posts, resulting in a sense of warmth and familiarity as viewers are introduced to the people in his life.

An interesting element in Nguyen’s sketchbooks is that he often draws his subject with a vertical orientation — opening his sketchbook vertically and filling both pages with the drawing. “I wanted to do color pencil work, but the sketchbook was too small,” he says. “I thought, if the page size could double, it might work. So, I went for it.”

“In the end, my drawings are about what moves me emotionally — friends, music, film, hobbies, art, and artists. I see my sketchbook as a personal journal.”

You can find more of Nguyen’s work at @fishsaucespaghettisauce on Instagram.

Art and Color 365 Magazine presents the winners, special merit award recipients, and honorable mentions from our March 2023 Watercolor Competition. We received entries from artists all over the world including Bulgaria, England, Spain, and across the U.S. We hope you enjoy the beauty, skill, and emotion found in the diverse works submitted by this group of talented artists.