For the 2023 edition of Drawing Now, Semiose proposes a focus project around the artist Philemona Williamson with a set of works on paper. Most of the artist's drawings and paintings depict young girls, children or teenagers, engaged in playful scenes often involving dolls. The artist says that she did not really experience that age of innocence and carefreeness and was thrust into the adult world at an early age. The children and dolls in her work seem to embody a dreamed-of childhood, an ideal space and time that the artist can only achieve through her art. Born in 1951 in New York, Philemona Williamson lives and works in Montclair, New Jersey. Her first museum exhibition was in 1988 at the Queens Museum of Art in New York. She has taught at some of New York's most prestigious art schools and is one of fifteen recipients of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award in 2022. This award has been given annually since 1996 to women artists over the age of 40 in recognition of their past work and in support of their future work.