A graduate of Monash University with a Master’s degree in Painting, Meg Williams constructs small, still-life oil paintings featuring toys and household objects. Her theatrically lit and intensely observed compositions will be on show from 19 November 2011 at Eva Breuer Art Dealer Sydney.

 "What is it about toys that hold such appeal for artists? After years of collecting and painting old toys I began to notice that a lot of other artists were doing the same. In fact toys have become a contemporary art top hit, coming in just behind skulls and caravans and those curly, woodland silhouettes. Do we use them to retrieve our lost childhoods or to act out unresolved early troubles? I do think there is usually some therapeutic reason for an artist to make a painting. As children we all acted out our fantasies with toys so perhaps, in giving ourselves permission to imagine freely again, artists tend to return to that familiar world. 

I started collecting old toys well before I painted them. I liked the hit-and-miss way their faces were painted, leaving them with wacky looks, crossed eyes or strangely haunted expressions, permanently stuck in a normally fleeting state of mind. Normally fleeting in a human, that is. 

When I set them up and light them it’s easy to believe that my toys are alive and up to something, just as they were when I was five years old. I look at them with the kind of sympathy that one feels for the subjects of a Dianne Arbus photo; they are blameless pawns in a game that they don’t even know is going on. I never know the purpose of a picture at the time of painting but some time later I usually realize what it is about. There’s a message from my unconscious in there, sent to me via the toys."