About Me

I’m a visual artist, poet, novelist and street medic, living in Philadelphia since 1964. I make art from trash I find on the street, work in acrylic, water color, pen and ink and woodcut prints: if I have a theme, it would be The Disintegration of the Human. 

All the ‘isms’ are gatekeeper driven. Which means, market driven–gallery to investor capitalist captures. I resist capture. Since we no longer can take the idea of ‘posterity’ seriously–teetering as we are, on the brink of collectively inflicted human extinction–I paint and draw and glue shit together in whatever way feels right to me–which means–whatever way I sense to be a step to something else… another drawing, another painting, another assemblage. I experience a resistance to representation in my own work–a resistance which at times I resist. I think it has to do with politics–the captivity, not of perception itself, but how recognizable scenes and objects are instantly translated into the propaganda of the global police state–into a false vision of the false reality of those who would own us.. and reality itself.

This isn’t an aesthetic ideology; it’s a form of mistrust, a mistrust that permeates, and poisons, our collective immersion in a state of false Being.

There’s no ‘ism’ that can capture that. What I want, is rupture… perhaps the nearest we can come to Rapture.

I sign my art with my birth name, Willard… in memory of my maternal grandfather who died two weeks before I was born, and out of love and respect for my Uncle, Willard Hardin–who was both big brother and mentor.

View portfolio here ART BY WILLARD
For photos on this blog:  CLICK HERE, and scroll down.

Jacob Russell is my pen name. To my friends and comrades, I am Goby.

Imagination/Love/Solidarity/Resistance!