Memento Mori; Love, Art, and Flowers That Bite
Everything happened with a bit of a quick pace, but not sure if it could have worked out any better. I had been practicing on doing gouache paintings for several years... In between assignment work and while waiting for deadlines. The thing most people that are familiar with my work will notice is that for the most part the bulk of this work is personal work. Most of them were honestly just what I considered as practice. Working of the technique of painting with gouache.
There was really no time to do new work. Literally, Lee and I flew down for a weekend, and a few weeks later Tim drove up and went through stacks of gouache paintings he spread out on my drawing board. We pulled some framed things off the wall in our house and a few that had been in shows in New York. And that was the bulk of the show. I had a few rainy weekends and Pretty much filled up a sketchbook full of new Stamp drawings. we thought would add some diversity and contrast to the tight gouache work.
It was great going back to Sarasota. It's where Lee and I met fifty years ago. We had some time to show our grandson Forest and his now wife Victoria around the places we used to go. The Columbia where Lee and I had our first date. I guess, “formal date,” our first connection after meeting at a school dance was to meet up on Lido Beach. I had forgotten how beautiful the beaches were at Lido.
“North Lido Beach” (which we used to call “Wash Out”) was for the most part almost deserted. We walked in and out of the weaving Banyan Trees down to Ca' d'Zan, John and Mable Ringling's Home. It's spectacular. We did a running tour of the Circus museum and the fine art museum. It felt like we sprinted through the walls of Rubins, Rembrandts, and Monets. Ringling has to be most extensive collection of Baroque and Rococo art outside of Italy and is probably best viewed at a less-than-jogging pace.
We chose to share some personal letters and artifacts to give some reference as to the origins of where the framed pieces came from. We decided to give Bob, our skeleton, a much deserved vacation to Florida. Most of this work is personal, and we thought sharing personal things would offer context and background.
Sketchbooks are a great source for exploring ideas and directions. We thought stacking some of them with our skeleton Bob would be an interesting way to display them.
You know wasn't really thinking of it as a skeleton lying in state, but more the weight of 50 years of work on top of him... Crushing him, with his bones sticking out from underneath like like the wicked witch when the house landed on top of her.
Painting miniatures comes from several sources.
First; from "The Book of Hours" we saw in New York at the Morgan Library a few years back. Incredible little paintings and manuscripts done in medieval Europe in the early 1500's.
Second; Some direct inspiration, from Lee's eggs that she paints me every year for Easter where she takes an artist she's found during the year and paints an elaborate egg using a rabbit, cleverly incorporated into them in some way...
And third; it's a direct reflection of the way with view our world through social media, at 800 pixels by 72dpi.
For years I've been sending letters to Lee... always decorated with collage, lettering and drawings. It's a wonder they make it through the mail at all. Im sure the origin of the stamp drawings came directly from these letters... a few years ago I decided to compile a bunch of the letters into an elaborate Valentines Day present for her, turned into, I think, an 86-foot-long accordion fold book.
This Display with some letters written to Lee and some old photos of us from Ringling only reinforces how quickly time goes. Here we are back at where it all started and we feel very honored to still be here.
Some observations about the show:
Tim Jaeger did a fabulous job putting everything together. We did have some differing opinions about the pieces being shown raw and un-cropped. My fear was that non-artists would not realize that the rough edges and splattered paint on the outside of paintings were just process, and think that it was part of the overall design of the piece. After talking with folks at the show I have to admit I was wrong. People loved seeing how I painted. I think it was a good compromise to show most of the work matted and framed properly. Leaving a few, they got a better grasp of how the painting were done.
I started working on this series I called Strange Dreams about five years ago. I loved playing with the surreal elements and twisting them visually toward a surprising end result. All of the paintings are all done in gouache on watercolor paper. They’re an ongoing experiment with medium and composition and the potent nature of dreams. I think there are no deep dark hidden secrets. It’s just fun to play with the emotions art can generate. I believe color is really emotion. Color choices are made to reinforce those emotions. To me there’s a sense of poetry in the playful use of surreal elements.
The stamp drawings
I'm not really sure if there is a rational explanation behind these silly little drawings. I paste these stamps in my sketchbooks and draw over the top of them. I love the contrast of the beautiful craftsmanship and stoic nature of the stamp, and the playful, graffiti-like gesture of absurdity. They make me smile.
If you are interested in purchasing any of the paintings you can write us directly @ bill@thebillmayer.com.
We will put together a complete inventory and price list as soon as possible. All pieces will remain in the show until it comes down April 3rd. Then work can be picked up or we can ship to you for an additional charge based on size, destination and method of shipping.