BILL MARTIN - Mendocino Art Center

Sphinx Moth
ing took too much time away from his
painting. He recently created a website, www.guidetooilpainting.com,
to help others learn to paint and to give
himself more time to devote to his own work.
Bill considers his best and most influential teachers
the artists of the Hudson River School, Albert
Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Thomas Moran, Edwin
Church and other notables. The Hudson River School
was hugely unpopular at the time Bill was
developing as an artist. Nonetheless,
Bill was profoundly influenced by
this group. “They were doing
what I wanted to do. I was
impressed by the scale of
their paintings and their
ability to create depth and
luminescence. I didn’t
want to just paint pretty
pictures. I was looking
for something more.”
Bill is driven to create
paintings with big
themes and what at first
glance appear to be opposing
forces: birth and death, fire
and ice, creation and destruction,
good and evil, the micro
and the macro. But, after closer examination,
the viewer gets to experience
Oracle Fire
how these opposing forces merge into
the whole, or what Bill often refers to as a “unified
vision.” Bill views painting as an ongoing challenge,
a journey and a quest, rather than an end in itself.
Each painting represents an enormous commitment
in time and effort. Many of Bill’s paintings take years
to complete.
Much of Bill’s imagery focuses on transitions
and transformations. Bill has faced many life-threatening
health challenges and at the time of
this interview, he is undergoing chemotherapy.
So the issues of life, death
and transformation are personally
relevant to him. His painting,
“Between Worlds,” depicts our
brief moment on this planet,
and yet connects us to the
infinite.
What does Bill want
the viewer to experience
when looking at one of his
paintings? He wants us to
feel the interconnectedness of
all things. He hopes we will
find something in ourselves that
makes us feel larger, that lifts our
spirits in a strong, positive way, and
leaves us feeling that meaningful personal
growth is possible. His work
can be viewed on his online gallery:
www.billmartingallery.com.
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