Month: January 2019

Tracing the Way

We see the past through the lens of the present. Points that brought us to where we find ourselves become markers of a path we construct, but which, in reality, is anything but straight. More like finding seeds that begin to grow out of debris we thought we’d abandoned. This is a piece from March, 2013 (#139) that was lost when we fled the Ox. Here was the anti-portrait (what we see is not what we are). There was a dirty, crusted window screen like a veil over the face. The trash assemblages I was making had begun to emerge as paintings. I recognize in this piece a link to what I’ve found opening into the future.

 

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Beyond Appearance

#461 “Aterwords” 25″ x 32″ Acrylic on canvas. February, 2016
#461 afterwords

I’ve put letters and numbers in my paintings since I started painting. Sometimes prominent, sometimes almost hidden. I tend to think about these things after I do them. I had no ‘reason’ or explanation for them, but it occurs to me now that they are–more than symbolically, because they ARE symbols– emblems of what we use in our attempts to understand our universe beyond appearance: language and mathematics–fragments of our woefully incomplete understanding of ourselves, of the universe we have come to inhabit–ever so briefly.

A portrait is a powerful untruth
We are not what we look like

Nothing is

 

#967 Can you See the Pattern Yet? or Remembering Chicago

25″ x 32″ Acrylic on Canvas.
I like to vary my work: theme, styles, color, and to avoid repetition–but I’ve become more comfortable with returning to variations on a few basic ideas. I think this may be necessary, if others are to understand what one is doing.
#967 Remembering Chicago.JPG
View more work at Saatchi Art, and on my web portfolio: ART BY WILLARD For photos on this blog, click MY ART on the right panel and scroll down.