Williams' formal education started at Corcoran School of Fine Art in Washington, D.C., where he studied Painting and drawing. He studied Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in Philadelphia and later at St. Martin’s School of Art in London. At St. Martin’s he studied under Anthony Caro and worked briefly as a studio assistant prior to returning to the United States. It was on Caro’s recommendation that he moved to Bennington, Vermont, a focal point for formalist painting and sculpture at that time.
Upon returning to the U.S., he accepted a position as sculpture teaching assistant at Bennington College and later began working as welder fabricator and studio assistant to Kenneth Noland. It was while working with Noland that Williams’s interest in color became dominant and he returned to painting and drawing. In the mid nineties Williams began working with computer software to create images. It was this change from traditional media that brought him to the break that allowed a new language for making art.