[1][2] Williams was an abstract painter primarily known for his pioneering work with shaped canvases in the early 1960s.
Williams graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1959; showed his work in 1959 at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco and moved to New York City that same year.
He was a regular patron of Max's Kansas City throughout the period of the mid-1960s and early 1970s when it belonged to his friend Mickey Ruskin.
His work was included in several important group exhibitions during the 1960s including in 1966 the influential Systemic Painting exhibition that showcased Geometric abstraction in the American art world via Minimal art, Shaped canvas, and Hard-edge painting curated by Lawrence Alloway at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
In 1986 he had a career retrospective in the historic Clocktower Gallery in New York City, (currently directed by Alanna Heiss, founder and former Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens).