Willing spoke of his paintings as 'scenarios in which something has happened or is about to happen but is not happening at the time depicted.' The fractured narratives of his paintings have affinities with the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico: unlikely combinations of objects in unlikely, theatrical settings. They have a dream-like intensity and he described his paintings as 'apparitions not appearances. Visionary not visual. (https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/painting-with-stepladder-70480/search/actor:willing-victor-19281988-63901/sort_by/object.summary_title_sort/order/asc/page/1/view_as/grid)