Margaux Williamson

Margaux Williamson (born in 1976) is a Canadian painter, filmmaker, and writer based out of Toronto.

Personal life Williamson was born in 1976 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and lived in the United States for thirteen years. In 1989, she and her family moved to Waterloo, Ontario. After settling in Canada, Williamson was accepted into the BFA program at Queen's University in 1996 and graduated in 1999. In 2000, Williamson moved to Toronto, where she currently resides with her son Billy.

Family life Williamson's former partner is Misha Glouberman, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in philosophy. In this collaboration piece Heti transcribed Glouberman's knowledge regarding communication and also edited the novel. They dedicated the book to Williamson.

Professional life Collaborations Sheila Heti Around 2006 Williamson found herself in a creative rut, and so she took a hiatus from painting and began a collaborative effort with Sheila Heti. From this friendship grew Williamson's film Teenager Hamlet and Heti's novel How Should a Person Be?. For the release of Teenager Hamlet and How Should a Person Be? Williamson and Heti also partnered with Toronto band Tomboyfriend. The band contributed to the soundtrack of Teenager Hamlet, and participated in a joint premier of Teenager Hamlet, How Should a Person Be? and the release of the band's first album.

Williamson and Heti collaborated once again in 2012 on Williamson's project How to Act in the Real World as part of her residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Tomboyfriend At the end of her residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Williamson collaborated again with the band Tomboyfriend. Her final work for the residency was to create a video for one of Tomboyfriend's songs, "End of Poverty". The video was premiered alongside a performance by the band. This performance, and Williamson's other performative works, pushed the boundaries of the gallery and were somewhat different from regular exhibitions. Over Williamson's career Katharine Mulherin has had a major influence on Williamson and has had a tremendous impact on the success of her career. Williamson has exhibited her works at many of Mulherin's galleries. When they first began working together, Mulherin tried to keep the prices of Williamson's art accessible, but there was an increasingly high demand for her work. Williamson took on the role of director for this film, and in doing so she left the comfort zone of her studio and began an exploration into filmmaking. Williamson stated that she wanted to "become a woman of action" and this film can be understood as both an opportunity for her to do so, and also to explore what being a person of action truly meant. Notably, Williamson's close friends Sheila Heti and Sholem Krishtalka were featured in the film. The movie was produced by Julia Rosenberg of January Films, the photography and images were done by Lee Towndrow and the music was by Steve Kado. Later in 2010, there was a DVD version that was released with Canada's KRK Media. In 2009, Williamson was the artist in residence at the Klondike Institute for Arts & Culture in the Yukon, which is where she first came up with the idea for her book "I Could See Everything".

Residencies Williamson describes her work style as switching back and forth between "craving" isolation and "longstanding conversation with amazing people". She says she enjoys being far away from cultural centers because of the opportunity it provides for a big picture view of the interconnections between works across mediums. There, without a computer or real access to the outside world, she was able to rewrite and finalize the film's script. Williamson examined these four concepts through videos and painting. During her residency, one of the works Williamson created was "How to Act in Real Life" a new and still on-going performance art series. The award recognizes an individual's achievements in the visual art realm. Partner in Art, gave the money to the National Gallery of Canada, which went towards the Shary Boyle who was involved in the Venice Biennale 2013. To celebrate this Williamson along with two other artists, Luis Jacob and Suzy Lake were commissioned to produce short films that commemorated Partners in Art.