About Me

Paul Williams has had an interest in art from an early age and throughout his adult  life always carried a sketchbook which was used to capture images of people in public places such as bars, restaurants and often public transport. He left work in the year 2000 to devote himself to painting which he studied at Heatherly’s School of Art in Chelsea for several years before setting up a studio in the South of France where he spends half the year with the other half  being  in London. In this way he  can sketch ‘cool people in hot places and  hot people in cool places.’ Sketches form the basis of most of his paintings which are people based.

Paul is also a cartoonist; being published in The Spectator, Private Eye, The Critic and KCW London. Many of his cartoons can be seen on his blog.

Paul’s work

Sketches are the raw material for studio based paintings.The emphasis is on capturing images of people who are unaware of being studied and it is these natural positions and the relations and interactions between them that are the subjects of many of his paintings. Portraying unconscious actions is also the attraction of producing  pictures  of people dancing where the aim is to capture the impression of movement as well as of the light and colour. He is interested in perception as we seldom see things as in a still and the subject might be best expressed by a degree of abstraction which sometimes gives a better impression of how we actually experience what we see. 

Paul is also a cartoonist; being published in The Spectator, KCW London, and The Critic.This has been a long term hobby and dovetails with the sketching. Sketching requires the capture of  the real living moment whereas cartooning requires the creation of human positions from imagination. The continual experience of observing and sketching figures in different poses is great practise for inventing the imagined actions of figures in cartoons.

Exhibition History