NCWC News: Two Area Painters To Exhibit in North Carolina Wesleyan College Gallery

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October 10, 2002

Two Area Painters To Exhibit in

North Carolina Wesleyan College Gallery

Rocky Mount, N.C.—Valencia Farrar, of Princeville, and Katrina Williams, of Elm City, will display their paintings in The Four Sisters Gallery at North Carolina Wesleyan College, from Thursday, October 24, through February 22. The exhibit will open with a free public reception for the artists in the Gallery of the Thomas Pearsall Building at 1:00 p.m., immediately following Wesleyan’s public Forty-Sixth Founders’ Day Convocation in the Dunn Center.

The exhibition celebrates the self-taught art of the Coastal Plain and introduces self-taught painters Farrar and Williams to the Twin Counties and the national folk art audience.

Valencia Farrar is a painter of cityscapes and skylines. She specializes in views of New York City and Philadelphia. Many of her panoramas of New York City show the now historic Twin Towers of the former World Trade Center. Although Farrar has never been to New York, her fascination with that city has enabled her to gain a visionary status.

Likewise, but as a personal tribute after September 11, Katrina Williams has depicted the World Trade Center looming monumentally and majestically against clear skies in one of her featured paintings. Williams says she felt a redoubled commitment to painting after she survived kidney failure and the successful transplant of one of her husband’s kidneys. She has become a prolific painter of a wide variety of subjects. She continually challenges herself by painting extreme close-ups and discovering and personalizing painting techniques to depict her vision.

The Four Sisters Gallery at Wesleyan was established to celebrate the art of the Coastal Plain and is dedicated to promoting and collecting self-taught and visionary art. This mission of the Gallery follows the collecting initiatives of the late Robert Lynch of Enfield.

Many of the paintings by Farrar and Williams are for sale. Gallery hours are 9 – 5 Monday through Friday and 9 – noon Saturdays. Phone the gallery director for additional information at 252-985-5268.

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