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I hope to make people look twice at my paintings and perhaps even dream a bit. It's the "walk across the room test" - - striking enough so that someone will walk across the room to see it. But how to do this? In my experience, to do this requires careful thought and planning. The first step is to select the right subject. I like to present subjects in a way that makes people think differently about them, for example, painting small things big or looking at the subject from a new direction. This idea of painting small things big is at the core of the paintings of flowers and rocks in this exhibition. If I paint a flower two or three times as large as it really is, I hope that scale will make people look at the objects in a different way than they have before. All of the paintings in this exhibition were inspired by my trip to the Big Bend area in May 2006. The landscape was large, austere, and dramatic, but the flowers were small. I know in fact that the flowers all are very hardy, but they look small and dainty. I hope that these paintings capture this mixture of perspectives. But a great subject like these flowers won't succeed unless the painting is done in a way that makes it aesthetically pleasing. To me, a strong painting begins with a good overall design - - usually with a dominant value or color and with key features and lines placed where they're most likely to attract attention. Then, the right mix of abstract shapes, sharp lines, and dissolving lines can create a real image. I especially like using colors that aren't individually accurate but that look real together. I integrate across the canvas by repeating the same colors, if only a little bit, throughout the painting. When I can put all of this together in the right way, the viewer will see and feel more about the subject than a photo would show. Nothing's more thrilling than imagining a concept, picking up a blank canvas, applying some materials, and then after a few hours looking back and seeing something good that never existed before. Every colorless canvas holds unlimited possibilities. It's magic. Bill |
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| "Art runs in my blood. My mother taught art in public schools in Santa Fe and in Midland, and both of my grandmothers painted (one of whom lived in Ft. Davis). I first began to experiment with paint during my "free time" while a cadet at West Point. I've attended classes at SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, along with seminars in New Haven, CT, Walpole, NH, Santa Fe, NM, and Washington, D.C. I've loved every minute of it (well, almost every minute)." | |||||||||||||||||||
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