Summary
A: All those things, but actually just being up against a wall that I couldn't get through. I'd always thought that if I couldn't be an artist, I'd die, it'd be the end. But I didn't die. I got curious. If I wasn't supposed to be an artist what was I supposed to be? And that's when I came back to me. When I first got into this, I did it because I loved it. I wasn't trying to prove anything, teach anybody anything or do any of that stuff that had gotten into my head about what art was supposed to be. I took the pressure off myself, where it just didn't matter - and that's when the natural flow of wanting to do art returned.
A: Scale. Instead of painting 6-by-8-feet canvases, I painted 6-by-8-inch watercolors. Very low ambition. No mystery. Everything was flat-footed, simple. I'd paint a broken cup, writing underneath it, "This is what happened, I broke a cup." I finally got out of my own way. "Witness, conduct, assist" was my attitude. I'd go into the studio, put up a piece of paper and if ambition got in there - what I was going to do, prove, get done - the real energy for doing the work would disappear. But if I just opened up, sat there for a while and let all that ambition drain out of me, I could see what I needed to do and I'd just do it. People are always asking me, "What does your art mean?" What I'm doing now is not trying to create an enigma. I'm just telling a straight narrative, like I broke a cup, drew a picture of it and told the story. At first I thought this was going to wipe me out as an artist because I'm revealing this. Unlike the magician who keeps everything concealed behind the mask, I'm saying, "There it is!" Yet people find this even more mysterious.A: We traveled around a lot when I was young. We lived in Indiana for 10 years, then one year in Washington state, one year in Texas, one year in California, then finally back to Washington, where I finished junior high and high school. During those summers - this was in the late '40s - we traveled every part of the United States except New England. I saw a lot of this country and was exposed to a lot. So some of the language, the expressions in my art come from little sayings and signs encountered on the road, like signs for Burma Shave or Fearless Ferris, the Stinker, a skunk on advertisements for gas stations in Idaho. There were phrases on café walls, like "The Hurrieder I Go, the Tireder I Get." So I think these were my first sources of inspiration. Plus, I got connected to reading pretty early. I loved art and reading equally. I'd lie on the floor in front of the radio, listen to kids' programs, and draw, sometimes drawing what I'd hear. I still do this. I listen to the radio and draw, switching between NPR and KPFA. Music, news, discussion, whatever appeals to me at the moment. This often stimulates my imagination. If I can't find anything on these two stations, I'll work to silence or put on some music. Nothing else on the radio interests me. I don't own a television.See the full content of this document
Extract
A Conversation with William T. Wiley
Having lost my way wandering around the streets of San Geronimo Valley, I arrived at artist William T. Wiley's home a little late and flustered - and nervous at the prospect of profiling one of California's most prominent artists, who just weeks earlier was interviewed by an art historian from the Smithsonian.
I needn't have worried. Wiley's sense of calm put me immediately at ease. He was sitting serenely in his garden, enjoying the intense midday sun and a couple of "pithy" books: Pure War by Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer, about technology's war against humanity; and Human Province, featuring essays by Elias Canetti. On seeing me, Wiley smiled as if he'd recognized an old family friend.His peaceful oasis consists of three rustic cottages surrounded by trees and traversed by a stream. One of his cottages, converted into a studio, contained several works-in-progress: A large canvas tackled global warming, another addressed our thirst for oil and the growing scarcity of water, and yet another referred to the 9/11 Comm...See the full content of this document
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