Ian Williams

I have two sides to my "career", and over the past few years I've been making some attempt to bring them together. I was "good at art" in school but, being somewhat idealistic, decided that art "didn't do much good" for human kind ( i realise now that i was wrong about that) and so went to university to study medicine, thinking that a more "noble" path . To cut a long story short, I continued to make art and started to exhibit my work, then went back to college to do a PG cert in fine art, whilst keeping up my day job as a doctor. There are, of course, lots of noble and good things about practicing medicine, but I have come to realise that doctors and nurses and other healthcare professionals are kidding themselves if they think that everything they do is worthy, and we are quite capable of doing harm as well as good. Self examination and self conciousness are good things, and can sometimes be a bit scarce in the higher circles of medicine. Anyway, i started thinking about doing an MA in fine art, but discovered, via a clever south Wales GP called Wayne Lewis, the discipline of Medical Humanities. I thought this might be a good way of pulling together my art and medicine. It was, and through it I started looking further into another interest of mine: graphic novels and comic art.

A confession:

or a disclaimer, or whatever: I am not what might be termed a "hardcore" comics fan, in that i don't collect comic pamphlets, and I am not very interested in mainstream superheroes or sci-fi. Not that these genre based comics have no value. I just prefer what Douglas Wolk calls "art comics". For that reason, my ignorance on certain matters might be evident to such fans, who are free to correct me or hurl abuse at me. I am no expert, but I have set up this site in the hope that experts may contibute to the discussion.

The other side to my career comprises my work as a painter and printmaker. Four days a week I make art, three days a week I work as a GP in North Wales which earns me a decent living. I fit the building of websites and playing the guitar into the remaining time. You can see my work at

ian-williams.co.uk