The Beauty of an Outlier

The Beauty of an Outlier celebrates the singular artistic practice of Franklin Williams, a multimedia artist based in Petaluma, who has spent more than six decades cultivating an idiosyncratic and diaristic approach to art making. Williams has dedicated his life to what he refers to as “beauty, mystery and myth” captured into visual form and defined by deep devotion, invention, and love.

Williams’s work defies easy classification, eluding the confines of the Funk, Nut, Visionary, and Pattern & Decoration movements that emerged in the 1960s. His intricately constructed paintings, sculptures, and works on paper combine a range of techniques—often rooted in household craft traditions and ornamentation—that include stitching yarn and crochet thread directly onto the surface. Through texture, color, and the repetition of knots, marks and dots, Williams has developed a singular visual language that animates his surfaces. His practice engages elemental themes of desire and fantasy, life and death, and the delicate boundary between the real and the imagined. Combining figuration and abstraction, this deeply personal and often autobiographical work is rich with material and conceptual experimentation.

The Beauty of an Outlier is curated by Lisa Lightman and Michelle Scott.