“We loved the world and the things in the world” is a small self-portrait painted with thinned oils on panel. It depicts heavy tears rolling down the artist’s face. Are they tears of sadness or relief? Williamson is always present in her “I Could See Everything” series, and perhaps, as some have suggested, figuring as a fictional painter. The portrait sits at a pivotal moment in the narrative of the series, which deals with the artist’s struggle–to some extent everyone’s struggle–to imagine a better world. Although evoking a collective “we,” the title suggests, rather than transcendence, a moment of radical acceptance of the world as it is, an experience of immanence. In the same instant, the title’s past tense suggests catastrophic or perhaps redemptive events at the source of the artist’s tears.