Sonny Williams is an oil painter based in Brighton, UK.

Williams creates paintings that are at once psychologically arresting and visually alluring. Rendering a precarious dichotomy of delicate aesthetics and uncanny disquiet, his paintings both challenge and seduce our common expectations of fleshly reality. With a distinctive collection of motifs that include melting or loose-fitting skin, neck wounds, missing ears and weaponised pinocchio noses, he deploys a bold and uncompromising visual language. By means of these symbolic bodily manifestations his paintings bear witness to human predicaments in the contemporary world, describing them as “veridical glimpses that exist at least one layer behind an illusion”. With inventive passages of oil paint and the use of exacting and emotive colours, Williams intensifies yet endears these unsettling visions.

Whilst drawing upon the rich history of figurative oil painting, from the quiet perfection of Early Netherlandish painting to the idiosyncratic freedom of Expressionism, Surrealism and the School of London, as well as the edgy reimaginings of his contemporaries, Williams maintains a definite belief in the medium's endless potential. His paintings are created by means of a rigorous technical process, making use of tenebrism, precise limited palettes and a layered non-formulaic “aging” which straddles both high realism and painterly improvisation in order to make unexpected visual breakthroughs.

Williams (b.1972, Lisburn, N. Ireland) grew up in the North East of England and attended the University of Sunderland, graduating in 2001 with a first class BA in Fine Art, specialising in oil painting. His work has been exhibited around the UK, including at Pilgrim Galley in London and his paintings are held in a number of private collections.