Bill Work
A good long time ago a spent a couple of years making drawings, paintings and sculptures as a method of softly poking fun at a professor I had a CWU (Country Western U) and then using the work as a device to think about the whole dynamic of the pupil/teacher relationship and how frequently that power structure can be incredibly imbalanced.
Bill (William Vance Dunning) wore the same orange vest every single day, was obsessed with the paintings of Mark Rothko (claimed he had a religious experience standing in front of one of them), made a point of discussing color theory frequently while making sports analogies out of the other side of his mouth and was said to light devotional candles to painter Willem de Kooning every night. He was our painting instructor but in all honestly not a single painting of his own can be called up in memory. Undoubtedly his worst offense was incessantly bumming cigarettes from his impoverished art students (CWU did not attract trust fund babies), even though it was acknowledged he had quit.
The series was a great way to explore color and pattern and cartoon-like figures. The resulting charcoal drawings are honestly the only ones I actually live with on my own walls after all this time.
I’ll be posting a few selections over the next few days.
All drawings below are charcoal on paper, 28″ x 20″.
[Votive]
[Religion]
[Bill]
[Ashcan 1]
[Converts]
[Blowout]