Artist’s root and branch approach
Steve Williams left a job in insurance broking to focus on art and horticulture. Now he paints and is garden manager of York Museum Gardens. Julian Cole met him. Main picture by Bruce Rollinson.
HOW fitting that this interview should start in an art gallery and end in a garden. It’s only a short traipse, but a longer path has brought Steve Williams here. In the week, Steve works as the garden manager of York Museum Gardens. When he gets home, a mile or so away, he switches to being an artist.
“I paint a lot of the time. I paint regularly to stay in the rhythm because that’s when the good stuff happens. I’ve got a certain amount of energy to burn, and I can paint pretty intensively for long periods of time.”
Steve is slight, shortish, and sparks with energy; he’s talkative and animated, witty too, with only a passing cloud of doubt. He worked in insurance until quitting 16 years ago. Asked if he’d had a crisis, he says: “Yeah, I had a midlifer.”
We are in the café at York Art Gallery on a crowded lunchtime. Amid the bustle and noise, Steve says he grew up in the Wirral, in an arty house. His father, Pete Williams, was a cartoonist for Private Eye and Punch, other magazines and the national press. His uncle, Mike Williams, was also a cartoonist.
“They grew up in Beatles-era Liverpool, Roger McGough, the poets, there was a bit of a buzz. He came through that and decided to become a cartoonist.”
At university Steve studied law, graduated without a plan, and ended up in insurance broking. He moved to York after he met his wife, Annabel. Their house had a greenhouse, and maybe that set something off in him.
“There are a couple of threads but it’s hard to give you a clear story.
I can make sense of it looking back, but at the time I didn’t have a clue. When I was young I was probably a bit arty. Ridiculously, I didn’t go and study art.”
He thought he needed a proper job. Did he regret that later?
“Yeah, I reckon I did. My path has led me here so there is something uplifting about seeing how I’ve changed direction. It might have been easier if I’d headed off there on day one.”