Over the past four decades, Peter Williams built a vibrant and deeply personal body of work distinguished by technical virtuosity and conceptual depth. A master of his medium, Williams created densely layered paintings that move fluidly between pointillism, figuration, and abstraction. His canvases confront the histories and ongoing realities of racism, challenging viewers to decode the rich network of symbols and references embedded within them.Working in series, Williams explored subjects such as mass incarceration, police brutality, a provocative superhero figure named “The N Word,” the Black women of the Black Power movement, the unrest in Ferguson, and even an imagined Afrofuturist universe. Across these themes, his practice centers on endurance, survival, and transcendence. As he reflected, “As I go further into the backstory of my work, I feel that it is all about the strength to cross a middle passage, to endure centuries of slavery, and find some place to exist that is not just on the physical plane. I’m trying to find that world inside my painting.”