In the early years of his artistic career, from the time he joined the WPAC up until the late 1950s, Williams paintings were primarily figurative. According to Donald Locke, a fellow Guyanese artist who attended the WPAC at the same time as Williams, his paintings during the WPAC were usually of pregnant female nudes, and his colours of choice were typically "pale, whiteish, yellows and browns". When he first moved to London, Williams initially worked with pastels because he could not afford to buy paints. Locke described his work in the mid to late 1950s as "tinged" with a "Cubistic-Naturalism" that was common to young artists in the WPAC.