| Scott Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1956 Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation | Painter |
Scott Williams (born 1956) is an American artist best known for his work with stencils.
Williams was born in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in Santa Barbara. He began painting with watercolor in high school, and studied art and anthropology at Santa Barbara City College, Cabrillo College, and Sonoma State University. He moved to San Francisco in 1979 and began to work in color xerox. He lived at the Goodman Building, a long term artist community in San Francisco, and was present for its closing and evictions in 1983. In 1983, Williams moved to Los Angeles and collaborated with Didier Cremieux on a large painting called "History of the World" which was featured in Immigre magazine and purchased by Modernism Gallery/Martin Muller of San Francisco. In 1984, he moved to Santa Barbara, continued painting and helped to run Talk Gallery in Santa Barbara. By 1986, Williams was back in San Francisco, settling in the Mission District.
In the early 1980s, Williams began to cut and paint with stencils. Some of the galleries he exhibited work were Show & Tell Gallery, The Altarpiece at the Offensive, Southern Exposure, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bibliomancy and the Adobe Bookstore. He painted murals at various San Francisco venues, both indoors and out: Armadillo's on Fillmore Street, Amoeba Records, Clarion Alley, Leather Tongue video, The Chamelleon bar, DNA Lounge, Burger Joint, Pedal Revolution, The Lab. In the early nineties, a series of cars and vans painted by Williams could be seen on the streets in San Francisco.
He also developed a handmade comic series in the 1980s with the characters Robot Dog, Cyber Kitty, and Mean Mouse, among others.
During the early 1990s, Wiliams collaborated with the artist Rigo on a series of large murals for the DNA Lounge, including the Philip K. Dick Tribute mural. In 1991, Williams was the subject of a documentary called "Spraypaint" by Nick Gorski. In 1995, he received the Adeline Kent award and had a retrospective exhibit at the Walter and McBean Galleries of the San Francisco Art Institute.
Scott Williams painted wall murals, car murals, furniture, private rooms, jewelry and any surface available for many years. Health problems brought him away from spraypaint in the late 1990s, when he began using an airbrush and focused on paintings and books.
Collaborative hand painted books include "Gemstone Fever" (2003), "Horses West" (2005) "Amerika Cup" (2006) with Fred Rinne, "Collect Call from the Spirit World" (2006) and "Watch Your Step" (2007) with Fred Rinne and Dana Smith.