Victory Banner (West Gate) 1

Piece description from the artist

My eight-year-old daughter asked me if I could paint anything other than stripes… and she has a good point. Brilliant minds that I respect in the art world have asked me the same thing. Yesterday, over breakfast, I sketched a bagel for my family. I exclaimed, “There! See, I can draw something!” We had a good laugh, but this pressing issue will not go away.

So why this? Why stripes?

By the way – they aren’t actually stripes.

Two decades ago, I began my journey, understanding only faintly that what I need, and what the world needs, are consistency and quietude. I decided to try to make art that had staying power. To do this, I married myself to a single mode of working. My paintings recognize the power of gravity, which forces all objects and liquids to fall towards the center of the earth – and which anchors each of us to this planet. The strokes I paint blur and travel beyond the canvas, and then return.

Tethered to the ground, anchored by gravity, my aspirations to create lasting, meaningful, primal art take root. Diligence, patience, and a willingness to grow and mature are the values that guide me. I recognize that pursuing a meaningful commitment is a rare and precious opportunity, since our culture seems always to be conspiring to change out the old for the new.

Informed by history, rooted in the craft of traditional glaze layers, and inspired by the vast and colorful landscapes around me, I surrender as my brush hits the canvas. I see vertical strokes as my launch pad. I love the tension of knowing that freedom is possible within the laws of gravity, color, and compositional structures. When I paint, I am aware of my condition as a human, an artist, a New Mexican, a partner, and a father. My paintings will not be perfect, nor will anything else in this world we share, but I strive towards perfection, which I define as freedom itself.

Other works by Willy Richardson

About Willy Richardson

Santa Fe, NM

Willy Richardson lived and worked in New York City for a decade, where he immersed himself in the international art scene, earning his M.F.A. in painting from Pratt Institute in 2000.

In 2011 Richardson's work was included in “70 Years of Abstract Painting” at Jason McCoy Gallery in New York, which assembled works by modern and contemporary painters, including Josef Albers, Hans Hofmann and Jackson Pollock. In 2012 he exhibited a body of watercolors at Phillips auction house in New York. Richardson's work and vision was featured on the PBS weekly arts series ¡COLORES!. He was honored to be one of the eight SITE Santa Fe SPREAD finalists in 2014. He exhibits his paintings nationally and his work is found in prestigious collections including the Albuquerque Museum.

Richard Levy Gallery wrote: “Richardson stretches vertical bands of color so intense across each canvas that they seem to crackle like neon. Gripping the viewer, a humming field suspends the sensation of time. He has described his act of painting as a sort of meditation, a give-and-take with gravity and the universal laws that determine our experience of the physical world.”

See Willy's portfolio here
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