In her studio, Williams experimented with her Prussian blue, layering, diluting and pouring the paint, letting it crack, pool and bleed across the canvas. The apparition on the first canvas was the only full human form to materialize… The rest of the resulting paintings — such as the evocatively titled “Historical Elisions, Gap for Blue” and “Blue Smells Like We Been Outside” — produced their own ghosts, neither fully figurative nor entirely abstract. Some suggest torsos, while others allude to landscapes, rivers, or veins.

The blue originated in the workshop of George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee food scientist known mainly for his research on peanuts. Carver was an amateur painter who developed and patented his own pigments, including a Prussian blue, from the Alabama soil Black farmers worked at the turn of the 20th century.

Williams discovered in her research that Carver registered a patent in 1927 which described refining red clay soil into paint and dye.

Williams, a Cornell-trained architect, has a deep understanding of color… Williams uses color to alchemize fraught histories into expressions of joy and resilience… For her 2015 project “Color(ed) Theory,” Williams coated eight homes scheduled for demolition on Chicago’s South Side in bold colors — “Currency Exchange yellow,” “Flamin’ Hot orange,” “Crown Royal purple” — referring to consumer products associated with Black life in America… “Amanda understands color tactically, strategically, and historically,” said Michelle Kuo, the chief curator at large and publisher at MoMA. “She’s not just using it for its visual impact, but to map out ideas of place, memory and Black culture. That really is her superpower.”

(Elly Fishman, “With 100 Pounds of Blue Pigment, an Artist Conjures Spirits of the Past,” New York Times, 3-15-25)

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