Biography
Born in 1940 in Ogden, Utah, Franklin Williams has been a pivotal figure in the Bay Area art scene since the 1960s. He currently lives and works in Petaluma, CA.
While Williams was still an undergraduate student at the California College of the Arts, visiting professor and esteemed art critic John Coplans gave the young artist a critical vote of confidence that helped set the course of his fruitful career. When the professor discovered Williams’s strange, intensely patterned drawings, he remarked, “this is who you are.” The episode culminated in the pair launching Williams’s more easily categorized paintings off the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
With the new, unusual work, the young artist gained early recognition. Just a few years later, in 1967, Williams was included in the landmark Funk exhibition at the University Art Museum at University of California, Berkeley.
While critics and historians have linked his work to influential movements like Nut Art and Pattern and Decoration, the artist has consciously and persistently maintained his distance from any group identification. For over 50 years, Williams has continued to create intricate and vibrant works that defy conventional categorization. Perhaps due to this steadfast idiosyncrasy, his work has maintained unusual resonance with respect to multiple contemporary art movements through the decades.
In addition to his art practice, Williams has taught generations of students at various institutions, including his alma mater, the California College of Arts (1969–2018), the San Francisco Art Institute (1966–1999), and others.
Williams has been the subject of over 34 solo exhibitions at prestigious venues such as: Parker Gallery (2022, 2019, 2017, Los Angeles); Sonoma County Art Museum (2017, Santa Rosa); and the Crocker Art Museum, (2005, Sacramento). His work has also featured in numerous group shows, including With Pleasure: Pattern & Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 (2019, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles); Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art and Design (2019, ICA Boston); Downtown Painting (2019, Peter Freeman Inc., New York); and Nut Art (2017, Parker Gallery).
Williams’s work is featured in numerous public collections including: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (Logan, UT); the Oakland Museum of California; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia); and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others.
