A Nashville native, Doug Williams was educated in literature and classical music, with a bachelor's and a master's degree. He taught in Hawaii, Texas and Florida; became a concert marimbist with symphony orchestras from Mexico City to Europe; and returned to Nashville in the 1970s to establish various businesses as an interior designer, an impresario and as a gallery owner.
In the early 1990s when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he began to teach himself to paint and set about on a mission to produce his own distinctive visual legacy.
"I am more concerned with my own conscious identity than with the work I create. Painting is one of the facets of human expression, a subject that is never exhausted. I paint as a musician would; I paint as a poet; I paint wide open.
The joy, which is an integral part of the experience, is contagious to anyone who is susceptible and vulnerable to the vision. The image is of secondary importance to the process.
It is not important that the work be liked or hung or accepted, but it is important that the work be seen. If the images can stop the eye and cause it to focus, then the brain of the viewer is exercised, and the imagination of the viewer is stimulated. The judgment of the viewer reflects his own experience."
