Work
Press Release
FRANK JAMES WILLIAMS:
STANDING STILL
Frank James Williams | Cavelle | 2026 | oil on canvas | 60 x 42 inches
Exhibition Dates: February 21 – April 4, 2026
In Conversation: Saturday, February 21st at 2pm.
Frank James Williams with Patricia Sweetow
Reception follows from 3-5:30pm
Upon visiting the studio of Frank James Williams, I was transported to the early Noir films I grew up with: espionage, resistance, decline, and grit, all dramatized in haunting chiaroscuro. There were few Black actors, and if they were present, they were in stereotyped support roles. In the 1970s through 90s, the New Black Cinema began subverting those early noir strategies in what critic and cultural theorist Manthia Diawara called “Black Noir.” Williams’ paintings take shape from this period, where Black realism and culture shine a light through figure, shadow, architecture, and color.
A combination of pitched psychological tension with intuitive illusion, Williams unfolds contemporary Black Noir with his exhibition, Standing Still. On view are new paintings with a few early selections of drawings dating from the 1980s. His subjects are family, friends, and acquaintances in unassuming dress. What pushes his paintings beyond ordinary into extraordinary are the subjects’ unrelenting gaze, their relationship to architecture, which is articulated yet austere, high and low light rendered in color, and their enigmatic shadows that become performers stretching across the painting—all are equal correspondents suspended in a surreal state of animation and mystery.
Williams’ work skirts easy categorization; he was often described as “a narrative artist exploring psychological and spiritual states of being.” I would expand that Williams’ vision embodies isolation and loneliness, conveys emboldened power, expresses vulnerability and intimacy, traverses across history, and tackles racism in life and the arts. The paintings also speak of Williams’s personal challenges recovering from two disabling strokes early in his career—all this is heralded in the paintings of Frank James Williams.
The artist cites historical influences such as Edward Hopper and Henry Ossawa Tanner, as well as luminaries Williams met and studied with, such as Charles White, Jacob Lawrence, and William “Bill” Walker. However, upon viewing the work, again it is Williams’ distilled voice that speaks with unparalleled authority in his creative practice.
BIO:
Frank James Williams lives and works in Southern California where he has a full-time studio practice. He was born in 1959 on the South Side of Chicago, a place of immense innovation yet unparalleled oppression and segregation. Williams’ mother, Barbara Jean Williams, supported her son’s interest in the arts, opening his thoughts to imagined possibilities. One of those possibilities was the after-school and summer programs at the South Side Community Art Center, where Frank studied under the lauded muralist William “Bill” Walker. Walker inspired pride and made art relevant to the kids who studied with him.
It was basketball and a scholarship from Saint Edwards University, Austin, TX (1978-1980), that finally took Williams out of Chicago. He continued with art instruction while at Saint Edwards but after two years transferred to the University of Oklahoma, Norman, where he pursued a full-time art education, earning two Bachelor of Arts degrees in Painting & Drawing and Printmaking & Design, graduating in 1984.
In 1985 Williams was accepted into UCLA’s prestigious MFA program, where such luminaries as Paul McCarthy, Chris Burton, Alexis Smith, William Brice, Charles Ray and Don Suggs were leading the program. During Williams’s MFA exhibition (1988), he suffered his first stroke, followed by 10 years of recovery, and then in 2012 he was struck with another debilitating stroke. It was during the second stroke that doctors discovered and corrected the medical condition responsible, ensuring a permanent recovery.
In 1989 Williams received a fellowship from Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, where he studied with Jacob Lawrence and met Gwen Knight Lawrence, a recognized artist in her own right, who became a friend and advisor during his residency. In 1995 Williams was the recipient of the first California African American Museum’s (CAAM) Artist-in-Residence sponsored by Seagram’s Gin (1995) culminating in a one-person exhibition, Frozen Moments.
Select public collections include: The California African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles; the Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, MI; the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, OK; the South Side Community Art Center, Chicago, IL