Gerald Williams, a pivotal figure within the Africobra movement, is acclaimed for his vibrant and dynamic paintings that resonate with themes of Black pride and empowerment. With bold shapes, rich colors, and intricate patterns, his compositions exude energy and vitality, reflecting his background in graphic design. Williams' art serves as a visual narrative of the African American experience, often delving into topics of social justice, identity, and community. Through his work, he seeks to amplify the voices and stories of marginalized communities, promoting cultural visibility and significance. Williams' contributions to the art world extend beyond aesthetics; his commitment to challenging stereotypes and advocating for social change has cemented his legacy as a pioneering artist and activist within the African American art community.
AFRICOBRA founder Gerald Williams was originally known for his blend of abstraction and figuration, what he called "mimesis at midpoint," in his time with the art collective, but he gradually drifted towards greater abstraction after decades living overseas. In the late 1970s, Williams moved to Africa where he lived for nearly a decade, before living in parts of Asia and Europe for the decades thereafter, until he returned to the United States in the 2000s. Inspired by the quality and clarity of light in Africa, various folk art traditions around the world, and equally diverse techniques for abstraction around the world, Williams began working on these meticulous "dot" paintings in the late 1970s and has continued to revisit the theme ever since. Williams has commented that the dots speak to a kind of universality: atoms and molecules making up everything, a unified field for all of existence, undivided. Contemplating the CMYK dots of magazine printing, dust motes floating on air, pointillist painting, African bead work, and numerous other sources, Williams has explored variable ranges of order and chaos in these dot paintings, which he continues to produce to this day. Enormously time intensive, they are meditative and immensely personal works of profound contemplation.