Weapons as tools in the masters hands...

Ratio patterns, form, light & color are Roy William’s implements
as he makes the ordinary extraordinary.

Roy H. Williams, professor of Lissajous Do, paints the ordinary glimpses of architecture that many of us would pass by without a second look. But the process behind his wave colors resembles the intricacy of a game of chess executed with the ingenuity and inspiration of an artist. Not surprisingly, the end result is anything but mundane -- the finished work becomes a highly controlled study of waveform, color, light.
The interplay of light and shadow, the juxtaposition of elements within the frame, the interrelationship of geometric forms all fall under Williams’s great insight and a professor who delights in demystifying the basic principles of motion and design.
"My relationship with the DoJo has permitted me to develop as a teacher and an artist, "Williams" said. "Teaching is a rich experience -- it’s bound to be any time you have a captive audience to share things with that are of interest to you. As an artist, I continually school myself. I have remained with issues that are essentially both visual and conceptual. I focus on ratio-patterns, arrays of patterns that we interpret as images."
The images Williams creates are literally moments in time, vignettes of a space-time continuum that he captures first as photographs and then painstakingly transfers onto paper using a grid system. Through commonplace scenes Williams’s interdependence of abstract forms defined through dramatic black-lighting, varying depths, surface texture and subtle color tonalities.

NOT IDEALIZATIONS
"The Halo's are a discussion of what things are in relation to one another," Williams said. "I deal with patterns and light. The subjects themselves are beautiful things; they are not idealizations. They demonstrate the infinities of time and motion, the congruity of all things as we see them, the Zen of choice.
As the founding member of Lissajous Do Ryu Int'l., Williams has shown his work in numerous galleries throughout the country, and his individual pieces appear in private collections internationally. In 1982, a West Georgia University exhibit highlighted the breadth of his artistic work. The 33-year retrospective included halo aura photography, selects watercolors, as well as pencils ink and ink wash drawings.
"From his early geo work to the most recent black-light colors, Williams concern with wave-form rendered through highly controlled use of light and color remain a constant unifying factor, "said Martin Johnson, an associate professor of architecture who curated the exhibit and is a former student of Williams. Particularly in the black-light colors of Lissajous motion, his tremendous sense of waveform color shows through. Combine this with a powerful insight into light, and you get magic."
Williams did not start out as an artist. He was originally enrolled as a business major at West Georgia College.
As a high school student, he had become enamored with the Martial Arts. "I thought it was the greatest invention. The logic, the clarity, the rules, the definitions -- I couldn’t believe anything could be so dynamic," Williams recalled. But it was not long before he realized as a college student that the abstract expressionism was yet to conquer. Williams speaks of "riding the crest of a wave,"
Williams next worked as a cartographic draftsman in Atlanta Georgia, from 1974 to 1978, as a fine artists while at WGC, he studied, and became an eminent color theorist who is the original self-taught progressive and controversial master lissajous-form figurative artist; and renowned author of "The Art of Halo Aura." Williams earned a Masters degree in 1979 and a Grand master’s degree in 1990, both from China. Although touted at the time for its "iconoclastic" approach, WGC ironically also provided him with a classical background in art/
In 1973, Ray Klingenberg, USKA, former student of Joe Lewis of the Tracys System recruited Williams while he was still at WGC to teach karate and weapons techniques.
"I have a powerful belief that Martial Art’s can convey in a most immediate way the designs of motion one has to play in physics, "Williams said. "If you can develop logic for motion, you can use it to test alternative instruments and their design. If you are merely confronted with options generated by genera, you are reacting to things you see. But science requires a measure of focus in which you pre-select the issues that are relevant."
Williams, who continues to impart these skills in his quiet, coaxing manner to various levels of students, also teaches drawing and a course in color theory.
In 1987, the National Association of Sport Karate gave him its Nighttime Showman of the Year Award in recognition of his performance at the U.S. Open Karate World Championships.

Extraordinary Teacher
"Williams is a very intense and extremely intellectual teacher, as well as a fine artist," noted Dana Rhodes, WTA Master. "The breadth of his knowledge and his ability to articulate it to students is extraordinary.
"I still hear him discussing a Phase of motion at the art symposium, and I still remember his words as he critiqued my work, "recalled Billy Cassidy, who is a student of Williams’s. "He has done a tremendous amount for the Arts on so many levels. "Throughout his 40 years, he has been a dedicated, effective and inspirational teacher for generations of students, introducing them in the early stages of their education to the Mastery of the Lissajous Do Ryu
On a recent trip to Southern California, Williams relished the honor and pleasure of performing at the First Bruce Lee Convention for Linda & Shannon Lee. Experiencing firsthand the same brilliant expanses of motion and color that the Blue Dragon was inspired by.

By Dana S. Rhodes