Steve Williams left the corporate world for a creative path and is now an artist and a gardener. He talks to RUTH ADDICOTT.

FOR some people, a holiday is a time to relax and reflect on where their life is going. For Steve Williams, it was the springboard to a new career.

After years of working in an office in the corporate world of finance, he decided enough was enough, took a pay cut, swapped his executive car for a second-hand Nissan Micra and embarked on a new career as a gardener and a painter.

It is a career change that has paid off in the form of some wonderfully creative artwork, as those who visited his York home during the recent York Open Studios weekends will have been able to see for themselves.

Steve turned the front room and kitchen of his home off Bootham into a studio, where visitors could see up close his colourful, individualistic landscapes, inspired by nature and the glorious North Yorkshire landscape.

For those who missed that weekend, his paintings can also be seen in local galleries – and at Michelin-starred restaurant The Black Swan, in Oldstead, where he is now resident artist.

Steve, who lives in York with his wife Annabel, nine-year-old son Joe and their cat, Charlie, is self-taught and didn’t start painting until he moved to the north east in 2002.

He was born in Liverpool and his dad Pete was an art teacher and cartoonist for Private Eye and Punch magazine, but Steve followed his peer group, studied law at university in Bristol and ended up working in the insurance industry. He knew it wasn’t what he wanted to do, but with a mortgage to pay and no obvious alternative, he carried on. Then, one day, after returning from a holiday in southern Ireland, he decided to start painting.

“I’d taken loads of photos and felt a connection with the sea and started on scraps of paper doing little pictures,” he says.

“I’ve always had a love of nature, bird watching and the natural world – sunsets, sky and sea, but as I got older, I got a bit self conscious and put all that to one side. I think that’s probably when I started losing touch with who I was.”

After moving into a new house in York in 2006, Steve took up gardening and when his health suffered and he was signed off with stress following the financial crisis in 2011, his hobbies of art and gardening became his salvation.

“I’d pick my son up from school, but I was flattened. There was little I could do other than paint and garden,” he says. “When I painted, it would take me out of the here and now and I was able to go into this creative zone and let go of everything.”

After he recovered and returned to work, he started thinking about a change in career. He did a distance learning course with the Royal Horticulture Society and worked as a volunteer in the gardens at Middlethorpe Hall, near York.

“I was really enjoying it. I was in touch with nature and it sat well with my dream of becoming an artist, so I invested a lot of time into trying to learn as much as I could,” he says.

His volunteer work eventually led to a six-month job at Beningbrough Hall and in 2012, Steve left the corporate world for good. “We went from going out for meals whenever we felt like it to a pesto and pasta lifestyle,” he says.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but he had learnt to trust his instinct – something which is also reflected in his paintings. He now has a permanent job managing the gardens at Newby Hall, near Ripon, including the renovation of the historic apple orchard.

“I find gardening is a creative process that adds fuel to my passion for painting and allows me to be as close to nature as possible,” he says.

He describes himself as an "emotive painter" and specialises in landscapes, seascapes, and architecture. He paints using acrylics, palette knives and brushes.

“What I do is absorb where I’ve been and where I am. If I go with my instinct, I lose the rigidity and that’s what I’m looking for, a natural flow,” he says.

“I try and build up layers so I’ve got a depth to my pictures which I hope is evocative of the landscape. I really like painting the Hambleton Hills and the whole of the Vale of York – I feel like I’ve got a connection with the landscape. I love it.”

In addition to solo exhibitions at City Screen in York, Steve's work has appeared in other local galleries, as well as during York Open Studios. He was also approached last year by Tommy Banks, Michelin starred head chef at The Black Swan, who saw his work at a gallery in Helmsley.

“His food is also inspired and underpinned with a love of the North Yorkshire countryside and there was a kind of synchronicity between what we were trying to do,” says Steve.

Steve is now resident artist and has eight paintings on display in the restaurant – his work sells from £200 to £700 – and as soon as one is sold, he replaces it with another.

One of his favourite buildings to paint is York Minster. “If I feel a building has a soul, then I can paint it,” he says. He also feels a connection with the sea, particularly the coastline between Runswick Bay and Robin Hood’s Bay.

“You get one shot at life and I’ve learnt to follow my heart and do what I love,” he says. “It’s not always the easiest path, at least it hasn’t been for me, but it is the most rewarding.”