Aubrey Williams was born in Georgetown, British Guiana. He received informal art tutoring from the age of three and joined the Working Peoples’ Art Class at 12. He trained as an agronomist, working for eight years as an agricultural field officer among the indigenous Warao people of the North-West region of Guyana. It impacted his artistic approach and he began a lifelong mystification with pre-Columbian art and culture.
Williams went to the United Kingdom where he founded the Caribbean Artists Movement with other London-based Caribbean artists. He first visited Jamaica in 1970 and was so enthralled that he spent several months every year there before being appointed as Artist-In-Residence at the Olympia Art centre. He spent the rest of his life engaging in his work between London, Jamaica, Florida and Guyana. In 1993, aged 63, he died in London.