Toolin Around Town: Franklin Williams: ‘I believe in magic’

Franklin Williams may be a world traveler, but his favorite place is his studio.

Here, the critically acclaimed artist creates paintings, sculpture and works on paper.

“Solitude,” Williams said, “is the greatest possession I have. I love coming home to this studio. It’s where I really belong.”

He uses the word “love” frequently, saying, “Don’t ever have anything in your life that isn’t love,” and “I’m in love with life and all the parts of it.”

Born and raised in Ogden, Utah, his earliest inspiration came from his family. Art was something everyone did. His mother, Ruth, more than anyone, nourished his artistic sense. A poet, she sometimes put on costumes when reciting her work.

When family members gathered to make quilts, young Franklin would climb under the quilting frames and marvel at the geometry they created.

“When my mother decided it was time for me to make paintings on canvas,” said Williams, 82, “she’d cut up bedsheets and stretch them on frames for me to paint on. We hung them on the walls.”

Later, she created a studio for him by hanging plastic sheeting on the walls and flipping over a floor rug for him to stand on as he worked.

“When I was about 15,” Williams continued, “my parents went to a party and I took down one of their favorite landscape paintings and painted a winter scene over it — which I later sold. When they found out, they weren’t upset with me.”

It was an uncle who taught him that using his hands in order to have fun and create beauty was to live a happy life.

“Uncle George was a miracle,” said Williams. “He planted his garden in a maze so children could play in it. He’d plant carrots over rocks so they’d split, then make them into carrot people. One summer he had a pile of gravel. We painted the rocks and made them into a mosaic patio. I really went to art school in that environment.”

In regular school, however, he struggled, challenged by dyslexia.

“I saw everything sideways or backwards,” he explained. “In school, I’d hand in my English assignments in comic book form. I hung around the gorgeous, smart girls, who did a lot of writing for me. It was extremely hard.”

Williams said he was 30 when he learned to comprehend what he read.

“I read everything carefully,” he said. “That’s how you learn painting -- you study each element. I have to focus on one piece at a time. I’m never satisfied with the results.”

Williams chose art as a profession while attending Carbon College, in Price, Utah, on a football scholarship. He’d read about California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and decided in 1961 to enroll. But he soon experienced culture shock, discovering Berkeley was a hotbed of activism— the Free Speech Movement, the Human Potential Movement and the Black Panthers. He was surrounded by sit-ins and peace demonstrations, violence and anti-war riots, all while earning his BFA and MFA degrees.

It was a challenging time, he acknowledged, but what made it tolerable was marrying the love of his life, Carol, whom he’d met in Ogden.

“I met Carol at the J&K Drive-In, where burgers were 19 cents,” he said. “She was wearing a cheerleader outfit and cowboy boots. She came to the car and I was speechless. I said to her, ‘I need a hamburger, I need a root-beer and I need a date with you.’ She replied, ‘You can have the hamburger and root beer — but no date.’”

The story, fortunately, doesn’t stop there.

“I asked her again and she said ‘If I’m going to go out with you, I need a recommendation.’ She called a friend who told her she wouldn’t be caught dead with me. We finally dated and three dates later I asked her to marry me. I drove back to California and tried to write her love letters. I wrote her bad love letters that she couldn’t even read. I drove back and we married. We just celebrated 60 years of marriage.”

The Williams have lived in Petaluma most of their married life, moving here when he was teaching at California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute.

“One day, in 1971,” Williams recalled, “we were returning home after visiting Mendocino and pulled off the highway to see Petaluma. After eating at the U.S. Bakery, we asked a realtor about renting a small cottage. We found a house, put a $50 down payment on it and we’ve lived here since.”

One reason they moved here, he said, was its security.

“I came here to protect myself from gunshots, troop trains and riots,” he said. “I once saw a bank robbery and was grabbed and thrown to the ground. It was like hell. I came here for the safety.”

Although devoted to his art, Williams also got great satisfaction attending school and sports activities of his sons, Spencer and Stuart. When the boys were at Valley Vista Elementary, Williams befriended principal John Anderson, who gave them a key to his cottage in Wales.

“We went there and I felt at home,” said Williams, who is of Welsh ancestry. “It was magical, everything my mother had taught me as a kid. We went back many times.”

Travel has been a major component in Williams’ life.

“We’ve been to 48 different countries,” he said. “I don’t know who we would have been without those journeys. Those trips made us who we are. In 1990, I was teaching at the Ruskin School of Drawing at Oxford University when we decided to fly to Venice. We found a room overlooking the canal with a plaque on the wall. It was where John Ruskin had lived when he wrote ‘The Stones of Venice.’ My life has been that way.”

His art has been shown in prestigious galleries nationwide. In summer, 2022, an exhibition of his never seen before paintings will be held in in Bern, Switzerland. Stuart Williams wrote the following in the introduction to his father’s book of paintings and poetry titled, “Soft as Cotton, Centered and Hard — Painting and Poetry”: “Franklin Williams has done for a lifetime what all of us have wanted to, yet none of us seem to: that is to primarily live a life free of the societal handcuffs worn by you and me. His paintings are the medium he has chosen to give others a spiritual snapshot into his mind, soul, and heart.”

Those words are a fitting summation of Williams’ power as an artist.

“An artist,” Williams said, “creates his own world. To this day I’m a dreamer and I believe in magic.”