Rachel Williams
Rachel Williams is a British mixed-media artist whose bold, stitched and printed works explore museumification, symbolism, and the delicate tension between fear and creation. Combining printmaking, collage, and fabric, she re-imagines relics and artefacts through a playful yet brooding lens. Exhibiting across the UK and Italy and represented by Kellie Miller Gallery and Omega Studios, Williams stands among Britain’s compelling new wave of artists redefining how history, craft, and emotion intertwine.
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Rachel Williams (b. United Kingdom) is a British mixed-media artist whose work oscillates between playfulness and unease. Known for her bold, layered compositions, she merges printmaking, collage, painting, and stitch to produce tactile surfaces that pulse with energy and introspection.
At the heart of her practice lies an investigation into museumification — the act of preserving and displaying the past until it becomes estranged from life. Williams re-imagines relics, taxidermy, and ancient artefacts within contemporary space, exposing how context alters perception and meaning. Drawing from early iconography and the primal language of cave painting, she re-links modern mark-making to its ancestral origins.
Fear, she says, is her driving force — a creative electricity that keeps the process alive. Through mono-printing and stitched intervention, she courts the moment between control and accident, transference and revelation. Her use of thread and fabric references both domestic craft traditions and the unsung women who shaped them, binding the ancient and the intimate, the gritty and the delicate.
Williams has exhibited widely across the UK and Italy, and her works are held in private collections internationally. Represented by Kellie Miller Gallery (Brighton) and Omega Studios (St Leonards-on-Sea), she continues to expand a practice that is as fearless as it is tender — a testament to how vulnerability can become a wellspring of strength and transformation.
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The Disappearance of the Humble Sparrow X
70 x 50cm
Monotype on paper
2023
TITLE
The Disappearance of the Humble Sparrow VI
70 x 50cm
Monotype on paper
2022
TITLE
The Horse and The Man
31 x 41cm
Monotype on paper
2023
TITLE
The Disappearance of the Humble Sparrow XXIII
41 x 31cm
Monotype on paper
2023
ABOUT MONOTYPES
While monotypes are made using printmaking techniques they are absolutely unique each monotype is genuinely one-of-a-kind. This scarcity creates immediate value and ensures that collectors own some-thing no one else can duplicate.
There are may ways to create a monotype from painting onto smooth plates then transferring the im-age to paper to drawing through the back of paper which has been placed on an area of thinly rolled ink. Shapes can be inked and printed in layers to form the finished print. This may involve may passes through the press ans the image is built up intuitively rather than conforming to a predestined plaln.
The spontaneous nature of monotype creation appeals to collectors who appreciate the visible hand of the artist. Unlike highly planned and executed prints, monotypes often capture moments of creative discovery and experimentation. The unpredictable interactions between media, surface, and pressure create effects that surprise even experienced artists, resulting in works that feel fresh and alive.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MONOPRINT AND A MONOTYPE
While the terms are often used interchangeably the key difference is that the defining characteristic of a monoprint is the presence of a repeatable element, even if each print is hand-manipulated to be unique. That is to say that an existing block be added to, amended have parts left un printed.
Rachel Williams (b. United Kingdom)