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Returning from Toronto Bill selected central New Mexico, Socorro
County. He and his family spent some seven or so years here before his domestic situaton collapsed and he eventually migrated
alone to Taos. In his Socorro period, Bill painted fewer pieces and much of his work was "darker" lacking the complex textures
of later works. Still we see the use of many of the same types of symbols seen in later work but along with references
to earlier works. Notice that at the center of Man and Woman is the suggestion of a rural scene not entirely
unlike that seen in Talfulano Painting. But, the image here is fused with a somewhat madonna like image and lacks the foreboding of Talfulano Painting. The male figure conjures notions of a Paris street scene almost as if Toulouse Lautrec had found his muse. The use of black "curlies" textured with the direct application of paint, sometkimes charcoal,
directly into the surface creating both line and texture is typical of a use and evolution through his entire career.
The original, unlike the reproduction here, also shows the use of a stick, or perhaps the pointed end of the handle of a brush,
in order to deeply "etch" line into the paint already laid upon the canvas--particularly the lines around the mid body female
form. All in all there are fewer of the typical symbolic language elements seen in later works but those that are employed
are rather more overt instead of simply simply suggestive. The "star" practically comes across as a well formed "Star
of David" for example. The circles around the man's cigarette, while quite pronounced and direct, nonetheless creating
a light whimsical suggestion within the overall composition--which is otherwise darker and more serious. Notice also
how, above the hips, Bill uses a pattern that reminds of fish scales or, even, the layering of wings.
In Bill's later work he sometimes eschewed eyes that might be
"too much" the focus of the viewer's observation but in this earlier work the eyes are large, pronounced and quite overt rather
than suggestive.
Ultimately this work, Man and Woman, above, suggests
that the youth of Talfulano Painting has grown up, the farm is somewhat more Latin and lighter, the woman no longer a outstretched gloomy mountain-earth-mound
(and she stands upright) but the man still oddly obtuse and slight in stature--like a peddler of some slightly tarnished notion
or potion. Gone, now, and forever, is the angular and discordant confused youth of Talfulano Painting.
| Early to Mid Taos Period, circa ?1989? |
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| "Ida [By the Light of the Moon]", Image Courtesy RANE Gallery, Taos, Judith Rane, Director |
| Middle Taos Period |
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| Pintura A La Carte |
| Temple Women |
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| In Cobalt Violet |
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| Man and Woman, Classic Socorro Period |
Well along in his Taos Period, "Ida", above, foreshadows strongly Bill's later mastery of the relationship of texture
to both color and form. While internet reproduction to two dimensions necessarily leaves much of the texture unobservable,
using a little imagination one can see the great surface texture where the surface looks "sandy". In this painting
Bill uses a myriad of techniques including dabbling paint off of a stick like syrup over ice cream, the use of texturizers
in the paint (probably literally dirt or sand), the use of splattering (a la Jackson Pollock), and many, many other manipulations
of paint both with and without primitive tools such as sticks, spatulas and forks (for Bill sometimes the most primitive of
tools, the bare hand, was the best). Notice also how the use of color has become much more refined--or at least more varied
across the canvas (less block like). Ida's eye is more subtle but the use of the "split" face composition is almost
identical to the man's face in the earlier work above.
Jackson Pollock on the Web
Willem De Kooning on the Web
Helen Frankenthaler on the Net
Mark Rothko on the Net
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