Focus on this artwork and analyze the Background.
The Shostakovich series grew out of an intense involvement with Shostakovich's work that extended throughout Williams' adult life. Williams first heard Shostakovich's music (Symphony No. 1) as a teenager, when he was studying for an agricultural apprenticeship in Guyana, and the experience had a dramatic effect on him. In 1981 he described how hearing the symphony's finale had made him realize "a sonic connection with a new wellspring of this state of human consciousness we call ART"; and in 1987, he recalled that the music had "hit [him] really hard" in a way that had "profound visual connotations" and that made him "feel colour".By 1969, Williams had been living and working in London for seventeen years.  Following an initial period of excitement and artistic success, he had come to feel increasingly "isolated" and "exiled from the art world". It was at this time that he began immersing himself in a "wild unknown world of sound" and working on a "visual expression" of Shostakovich's music. From 1970 onward he spent large amounts of time each year working in studios in Jamaica and Florida.
Symphony No. 1 symphony Guyana Florida Symphony Jamaica