Robbie Williams: My art? It's 25 minutes then, boom, on to the next one

Times

04-05-2025

He has sold more than 75 million records, won 18 Brit awards, feuded with Oasis and had at least one romantic relationship with a Spice Girl.
It is little wonder, then, that Robbie Williams, 51, feels he has 'completed music'.
So, for the past few years, the Angels singer has turned more and more of his attention to art. Armed with an iPad and no formal training, Williams is prolific. 'I've got 3,000 of these [pictures]. Like, I did five yesterday,' he said as he launched his latest exhibition, Radical Honesty,at the Moco Museum in Marble Arch, central London, last Thursday.
He is not an artist who agonises over his oeuvre. While Leonardo da Vinci took approximately 16 years to paint the Mona Lisa, Williams said he takes 20-25 minutes per picture.
As for the art training, he said: 'I haven't got the time and I haven't got the inclination. I have too many ideas … I have the idea for the speech [the text on each art work], I knock up the thing behind it, the thing that takes 20 minutes, 25 minutes to draw, boom, I move on to the next one.'
Showcased at a gallery that has exhibited works by artists such as Marina Abramovic and Banksy, Williams's pictures focus on mental health and social awkwardness. One features the text: 'Give your anxiety a silly name. Mine is called Blanche.'
Another, captioned 'Radical honesty at the social event', says: 'To be completely honest, I'm not sure if we are friends or we've just been in the same room a lot in [the] last 15 years'.
A third depicts a cassette tape on which Williams, who is dyslexic, has written: 'Just because you're dyslexic, doesn't mean you're not stupid.'
The singer was pleased to see his works displayed. 'When I do these on the iPad, they're obviously very small images and to see them in such a great size now and feel — from my humble perspective, which has been pointed out, is not that humble — they can actually stand alone at this size. It just feels really good. I can imagine them in people's houses.'
Although Williams has not priced his latest works, a picture he did with his friend, the interior designer Ed Godrich, sold for £40,000 at Sotheby's in 2022.
He intends to sell his latest exhibited artworks for a similarly high price. 'We haven't commercialised them yet, but I'm f***ing gonna. I think that what you do with the big ones, you know, the ones that stand alone, they won't be priced accessibly. They will be accessible to rich people.' Cheaper prints will also be available.
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Williams is not the first musician to exhibit their art — David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones have also staged exhibitions. The former Take That star credits his friend, the artist David Hockney, who also uses the iPad to draw, for empowering him and showing him that the tablet is a worthy medium.
The singer said: 'When I was at school [in Stoke-on-Trent], you were either Picasso or Magritte or Constable or you're not an artist, there was no representation then … The arts was a middle-class thing, and then Banksy arrives and graffiti arrives and it's punk … Because of Banksy, I went: 'Oh, art's not necessarily Constable.' '
The artworks in the exhibition address Williams's contradictory thirst for attention and fame and social awkwardness. The singer, who lives in Kensington, west London, and is married to the American actress Ayda Field, 45, finds respite with his family. The couple have four children — Theodora, 12, Charlton, 10, Colette, 6, and Beau, 5.
He said: 'There is a definite concentration level that is beyond where I'm comfortable when I'm anywhere other than with my wife, the kids or my very, very, very good friends. And even still with some of my very, very, very good friends, when I'm a feeling a particular way, I might feel uncomfortable around them too.'
Ever the creative polymath, Williams has set his sights on launching a 'creative university', where he would like to teach young artists and entertainers the skills they really need ('everything that I should have known when I signed a contract the first time I signed a contract in Take That') rather than simply focusing on performance.
Williams added: 'I mean, I kind of completed music. I love it and I'll be writing songs and everything, but I think I want to teach people how to be managers, agents. I want to teach them how to do their own merchandise. I want to teach them how to be front-of-house. I want to teach them how to talk to people, how to behave in the room.'