Hello! I’m William!

 

I’ll be honest, I didn’t go to art school. I have little to no formal training as a visual artist. Instead, I spent a good part of my life as a touring musician up until the arrival of my children. It was around then that I fell in love with printmaking after commissioning a printmaker to design an album cover for my old band.

Since then, I’ve obsessively poured myself into learning the many forms of printmaking, from relief to intaglio to collagraph to monotype. The latter of which felt much like coming home, artistically speaking.

The medium of monotype allows me to express myself in a manner not dissimilar to the way writing, recording, and performing music once did. I find that the loose, pliable manner of the monotype means I can simultaneously work within the structure of a formula as I would through verse and chorus. It also allows me to approach my subject matter with a certain degree of abstraction and improvisation, much the way I would have interacted musically with other performers.

In the end, I find that both thoughtful and spontaneous printed layers of ink may often result in an image that, like a song, can transport you to a place of better understanding and appreciation – be it flora, fauna, the landscape, or us.

My hope is that having experienced my art, you too will come away with a sense of awe for the natural world, and your place within it.