All Night Through
Sleeping figures are a common theme in the work of Evelyn Williams. Williams spoke of the recurring image of the sleeping woman: ‘sheets like caves carved by the sea, in some suspended time of her own, her own personal time’ (1990). Whether isolated or depicted in a relationship, these figures are captured during the lonely period of night time – a period wherein reality is obscured by the dreamworld. The figure in All Night Through is neither fully asleep nor fully awake; the glimpse of her eyes speak to this in-betweenness, gliding in and out of sleep and self-awareness. Her preoccupation with sleep speaks to a fascination with the distance invoked by dreaming as a strange disconnected hinterland.