David Molesky. “Will Wilson.” Fine Art Connoisseur. Print. Volume 16. Issue 6. Dec. 2019. Pg 46-51.

BY DAVID MOLESK Y

T O D A Y ’ S M A S T E R S

WILL WILSON: STORIES FROM A MASTER PAINTER’S JOURNEY

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ifteen years ago, I was stopped in my tracks by a painting in a San Francisco gallery’s window — a beautiful double portrait of a black man with white flowers. I stepped inside and learned that this piece, titled An Arrangement, was by Will Wilson (b. 1957).

A decade passed and I found myself living in the Bay Area again. A new acquaintance introduced me to her other artist pal, Will. “Will Wilson?” I exclaimed. It was indeed him, so hours of conversation about painting ensued, punctuated by much enthusiastic gesturing. We made plans to swap studio visits, but as I was moving back East, it would be nearly a year before I actually saw Wilson again.

For more than 20 years, Wilson had occupied a cavernous space above the John Pence Gallery on Lower Nob Hill, a gallery I had revered as a veritable chapel of refined oil painting. When I finally made that studio visit, I gravitated toward the strong mast of Wilson’s easel, which stood at the center of a glowing beam descending from a massive skylight. Perched on it was The Painter’s Wife, a small, exquisite painting of Kyra Wilson with an ermine. Its almost enameled-looking surface, richness of color, and deft draftsmanship brought back the flushed excitement I felt when I first saw Wilson’s work. Even within our era’s ongoing figurative renaissance, his paintings stand out for their extraordinary craftsmanship, as he is one of the few living practitioners of the black oil technique developed by the French-born painter and conservator Jacques Maroger (1884–1962). This method of painting was the product of Maroger’s career-long search for the secret medium used by Rembrandt.

During the studio visit, Wilson gave me a brief tour of his paint-making area. Above a counter of heating elements and Erlenmeyer flasks were shelves containing jars of pig- The Painter's Wife, 2012, oil on panel, 9 3/4 x 9 3/4 in., available from Gallery Henoch, New York City ments. He explained how he has always made his own paints and mediums from scratch. To a flask of heated linseed oil, he On my next visit to San Francisco, I hoped to visit Wilson again, added flakes of litharge lead to thicken the fluid, causing it to become but he had moved to Mexico! This seemed so out of the blue, but as nearly black. This medium helps the paint layers dry overnight with John Pence was retiring and closing his gallery, Will and Kyra had a luxurious even sheen. All drying oils tend to darken eventually, but decided to resettle in San Miguel de Allende. With active plans to visit this technique darkens the oil to its fullest extent before it is used for them in the near future, I recently prodded Will via e-mail into sharing painting. This ensures that the colors will not yellow with age: what some of the best stories from his life in art. you see now is what you get later.

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An Arrangement, 2004, oil on linen, 48 x 52 in., private collection

David Molesky: Your relationship with John Pence has had a huge impact on your path as an artist. Tell me how you were discovered by him and the events that followed.

Will Wilson: I heard about John Pence from my teachers, Ann and Hans Schuler, back in 1978, when I was 21 and enrolled in their Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore. In his San Francisco gallery, Mr. Pence had just produced a posthumous retrospective exhibition devoted to Jacques Maroger. Ann Schuler had been Mr. Maroger’s assistant for some 30 years at the Maryland Institute College of Art and was continuing to teach his painting methods, including how to make the Maroger painting medium.

The success of the Maroger show in San Francisco inspired John Pence to produce a follow-up exhibition encompassing many of Maroger’s students, such as John Koch, Frank Mason, Robert Maione, Reginald Marsh, and many more. Ann Schuler was asked to help curate it, and, surprisingly, she wanted my work to be included. Of course, I was reluctant to participate as I considered myself still very much a student, but Ann insisted and we selected three of my paintings to send along F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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with hers, all of which John Pence accepted. This would be my first experience showing in a professional gallery, and I was excited to be among so many artists I admired. I considered attending the exhibition but decided it was just too far away and expensive to reach.

One night I was home alone, lying in bed with a massive earache, when the phone rang. I answered with my good ear, and, to my surprise, it was John Pence. He was calling to report that all three of my paintings had sold and that he would like to meet me. The show was up for another few days, so would it be possible to visit him in San Francisco? I remember being so excited that I ran outdoors looking for someone to tell. The next day I was flying to the City by the Bay, earache and all.

When I first entered his gallery, John Pence was sitting at his desk talking on the phone, so I slowly drifted around the space looking at the art by many of my favorite contemporary painters. The experience was thrilling. After 10 minutes or so, John hung up and promptly said, “You must be Will.” I nodded and asked how he knew that. He replied, “You walked right by your paintings without even looking, but looked at all the others.” He was and still is a very intuitive guy.

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(ABOVE) Dreaming of Carel Fabritius, 2001, oil on linen, 54 x 60 in., private collection

(LEFT)

Sleepwalking, 1993, oil on canvas, 48 x 54 in., Seven Bridges Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut

The gallery was closing in a few minutes, so I was invited upstairs to the inner sanctum to have a drink and my horoscope read. How could I say no to that?

That first night John was trusting enough to offer me my first solo show, which we staged a year later. Little did I know I had just met my art dealer, as well as my lifelong mentor and friend. Ultimately, I had 13 solo shows there and was included in almost all of the group shows, too. I would also move to San Francisco and establish my studio directly above the gallery. I became the go-to guy when a painting in the gallery needed touching up or varnishing. In addition, I attended almost every opening to welcome artists from out of town and give moral support to anyone who needed it. Just as he did for me, John gave many painters their first solo shows and helped nurture many successful careers.

John Pence represented me for 40 years until his retirement three years ago.

I feel extremely lucky to have had such a wonderful relationship. My good luck continues as I am now represented by Gallery Henoch in New York City, a firm I have admired for at least 40 years.

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(ABOVE) Corridor, 2019, oil on linen, 22 x 30 in., available from Gallery Henoch, New York City (RIGHT) Reynolds Price, 1997, oil on linen, 16 x 14 in., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

DM: I love your allegorical self-portrait as Fabritius. Could you tell me the story behind it?

WW: In 2001 John Pence staged an exhibition entitled Homage, for which he asked artists to complete one painting each in homage to an artist of their choice. For me this was a difficult task because I am in awe of — and inspired by — a long list of painters, living and dead. I began poring through books looking for inspiration when I spotted one of my favorite little pictures, The Goldfinch, painted by Carel Fabritius (1622–1654) in the last year of his life and now at the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

I went to bed that night thinking about Fabritius, his scarce but wonderful paintings, his short life, and the extraordinary way he died. (He was killed by the explosion of a gunpowder depot, a huge tragedy that erased a quarter of Delft.) That night I had a vivid dream in which I was Fabritius: while Delft burned behind me, that famous goldfinch landed on my brush. I awoke with a start, grabbed some paper and a pencil, and sketched what would become my contribution to Homage.

In my background I decided to reference Vermeer’s famous painting View of Delft, here set ablaze just after the explosion. I dressed myself in garments similar to those worn by Fabritius in one of his self-portraits, and rested his iconic goldfinch on the end of my brush as I tilt back asleep at the easel, dreaming of the painter, his life, his work, and his dramatic end. The weight of the bird on my brush relates to Fabritius’s influence on my art, and placed on F I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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Box of Life, 1994, oil on linen, 23 x 23 in., private collection

the shelf behind me is a small shell of the kind Rembrandt etched. (Fabritius was arguably one of Rembrandt’s finest students.)

DM: You told some great stories during your 2018 presentation at the Seven Bridges Foundation (Greenwich, Connecticut). I loved the one about the pop star calling you.

WW: You mean Michael Jackson and my one and only album cover illustration? First, I should flash back to when I was a kid growing up in Baltimore. My biggest dream was to become an illustrator akin to Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth. I was 8 years old in 1965, and, after my first trip to the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, I was fixated on those legends from the Golden Age of American Illustration. Later I would learn that full-time illustrating was not the best fit for me, what with the stress of deadlines and difficulties of collaboration. I would be much happier painting my own ideas, with just a few illustra-

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tion projects thrown in occasionally. But to this day, if the phone rings and an interesting illustration project comes along, I will drop what I’m doing and take the commission. When they are few and far between, I can enjoy a little stress, as it seems to enliven another part of my art brain.

So in 1996 I was asked to paint the cover for a major musical artist’s new album. I was not told who the artist was, but when I expressed interest, they said they would call me back later that day with details. You can imagine my surprise and disbelief when the next caller introduced himself as Michael Jackson. I immediately burst out laughing, thinking it was my friend Dennis playing a practical joke on me, but after many moments of confusion and awkward giggling, it slowly dawned on me that this was in fact a very polite and soft-spoken Mr. Jackson. He told me he’d seen my painting Sleepwalking in a magazine and hoped I might create an image for his next album, Blood on the Dance Floor. After much embarrassment and

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(ABOVE) Pyracantha, 2015, oil on linen, 10 3/4 in. (diameter), private collection, courtesy Gallery Henoch, New York City

(RIGHT) Alchemy, 2011, oil on linen,

20 x 16 in., Gallery Henoch, New York City

excitement, I said that I would love to give it a try, and that began a very stressful three weeks.

My first strategy was to keep the painting small so I could finish it on time. (The final result measures only 15 x 15 in.) Now all I needed was to receive the concept for the cover and some good reference photos of Michael. At the time he was on a world tour and his photography crew were waiting for an opportunity to have him model for me. I kept awaiting that FedEx delivery, and now he had missed at least three photo shoots. Finally, his tour arrived in Los Angeles and the photos were taken. I got them the next day and immediately started work. I finished the painting in about a week and a half and handed it off to FedEx. Done!

Not so fast. Two seconds later, the phone rang and it was Michael Jackson and Nancy Donald, the album’s art director. They asked if I could add a black wristband to Michael’s right arm. I groaned and told them the crated painting was on its way to L.A. Then I heard, outside my studio, what sounded like wheels spinning in the snow; it dawned on me that it might actually be the FedEx truck stuck on my driveway. I asked Michael Jackson if he wouldn’t mind holding. Sure enough, the truck was having trouble, so I got the driver to stop. I rushed back to the phone and said I would be happy to make the addition. Everyone was pleased and we said goodbye. I removed the lid from the crate, and, with the FedEx guy hovering over me, I added the wristband, repacked the painting, and this time it really went off.

DM: You recently moved to Mexico. What motivated you to become an “expat”?

WW: The move to Mexico was Kyra’s idea, and I quickly jumped on board. We had lived in San Francisco for 20 years, so we were ready for an adventurous change. John Pence had retired and the timing seemed right. We fell in love with San Miguel de Allende on our first visit and purchased a home there soon after. Two years later, my new studio was completed, and now I am back at the easel while working on my Spanish.

One of the first paintings completed in the new studio is Corridor. The more I learn about humans and our relationship with the rest of the animals on Earth, the more disgusted I am with our species. Our egos, insecurities, and entitlements often seem to cast long, dark shadows over our good qualiF I N E A R T C O N N O I S S E U R · C O M

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ties. In Corridor we see a frustrated, angry wildcat striking back at a hightension power line, symbolizing the conflict between man and other species.

DM: What was your most starstruck encounter with another visual artist?

WW: Meeting the painter Paul Cadmus (1904–1999) was a thrill.

My dear friend (and amazing artist) Michael Bergt introduced me to him while I was living in Manhattan in 1989. Michael had become good friends with Paul after much correspondence about egg-tempera painting.

We all would meet from time to time at the home of the larger-thanlife cultural figure (and Cadmus’s brother-in-law) Lincoln Kirstein, which was a thrill in and of itself. At the time, I was enrolled at the New York Academy of Art studying anatomy, and one night at dinner Kirstein was grilling me on the necessity of anatomical studies. He waved his hand across the table and proclaimed something to the effect of “Pauli here never dissected cadavers and he’s the best damn figure artist there ever was!” Well, I couldn’t argue with that.

I look at my Cadmus books all the time; I’ve also had the pleasure to see his original works in person many times and they still take my breath away. He was very sweet and supportive of my work, and we had some wonderful conversations. We talked about the arc of a painter’s career and how the work evolves. He told me that by accepting his limitations, he was able to produce more interesting work. At first, I was surprised by this comment, coming from such an accomplished artist, but now that I am in the latter stages of my own career, what he said makes more sense.

We want to be challenged, as our reach should always exceed our grasp, but with maturation and acceptance of one’s limits, we develop a better understanding of who we are as painters and as people. Even though I knew Cadmus only a short time, he taught me to be honest with myself and to trust my intuition. What a thrill it was to cross paths with one of the greats. Plus, I have two of his original works in my house!

DAVID MOLESKY is a representational artist and writer based in Brooklyn.

His oil paintings of figurative narratives and turbulent elements are in museum collections in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

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