Ann Marie Williams is an award-winning fine artist and illustrator residing in Reston, Va. A graduate of Howard University in Washington, DC, she has worked as a graphic designer, publications manager and art director. Ann has received numerous design awards, and judged several national design competitions. She has also taught graphic design at The American University School of Communications. Even though she has been working as an art director for several years, she is serious and passionate about fine art and painting.

Williams is a member of the Greater Reston Art Center (GRACE), Black Artists of DC, and The Women’s Art Museum in Washington, DC.
Recent accomplishments include winning a 2010 Strauss Fellowship Grant from Fairfax County Arts Council and the 2006 National Cherry Blossom Festival® Art Contest. Her painting for the Cherry Blossom Festival contest was among 70 submissions received for consideration for the festival. Entries were sent in from all over the nation and from around the world, including Japan and the Netherlands. She also won third place in a national painting competition sponsored by Daimler/Chrysler Corporation.

Ann has illustrated four children’s books that have been published. She has traveled extensively in the Washington, DC, New York and New Jersey to promote the books. She has received three national book awards for her illustrations. She is a past Vice President on the Board of Directors for MTC Art Studios, a school for gifted and talented art students in Bowie, Md.
In studying abstract art and independent study of the New York School of Painting, she has evolved from the realistic tradition of painting to a more modern form of abstraction. All of her formal training has been channeled into one direction, to produce a series of paintings that burst with bright and exhilarating colors. Her paintings are very expressive and incorporate acrylics, collage, oil pastel or crayons to achieve varied textures. She uses a very strong sense of color, line and movement.

She has exhibited extensively in the Washington, DC area and her paintings can be found in homes across the United States.
Williams states, “My work has been compared to that of Ghanaian artists.
I am exploring the theory of atavistic memory in my painting. Atavistic memory is the role and communication in overlapping generations, whether conscious or unconscious. This study can be seen in my use of African-influenced colors, line, dry brush techniques
and collage.”