An Insightful Interview with Photographer, Painter, and Professor Bill Crosby

I have with me artists, William Crosby, also known as bill who is represented by the Portland art gallery. He has I'm I think about four, no six decades worth of art experience at this point. So we have a lot to talk about today. Thank you for joining us and thank you for being here today, Belton. Well, Thank you. My pleasure to be here. I'm not quite sure where to start, but that's something that I face all the time. When I look at an empty canvas, where to start, how to begin. And, uh, for me, it's, it's more abstraction and a degree of realism, but, uh, unlike many artists, they know exactly what they want to paint before they put anything on the canvas. I don't, I may suggest as well, let's say in this one, uh, uh, horizon line in some canvases, others, it's just a few brush strokes or pencil strokes, and then I get into it, but I don't know where it's going. And this goes back to my roots in abstract expressionism, uh, which was just, uh, coming into commonplace in the sixties. Uh, when I was at a student at the university of Michigan, Well, let's start with this painting that is behind us. It is called spring. Yes. And for those who are listening on the podcast, oh, would you describe that for us? I have a, uh, hard horizon line of water, which represents probably the ocean more than anything else, because we spend a lot of time here on the coast of Maine. And then, uh, I was really taken back, especially this spring. We were over here in Maine. We live in Northern New York, uh, and the foothills of the Adirondacks and lake Champlain. And it's really, we have, it's hard to both. Places is so beautiful, but in any case, we were here and w watching spring, take fold with colors coming out and the light greens and the pinks and things blossoming up. So this is very light painting compared to many of my, uh, more summer or even winter paintings can be, uh, different palette. And some people are surprised at some of the lighter, brighter colors, but it came from this spring and it was a nice slow spring this year. Uh, I'm very suggestive. Is this, uh, the most you have, uh, the, the, a horizon line suggests the landscape. Yes. And everything else just happens. That was the first thing put down now that line, but then everything else just happens as I go. And it goes back to my roots in abstraction and abstract expressionism, and one brush stroke leads to another and leads to another. I often wear work with a very wet, uh, not only what palette and canvas, so things can run and drip. And then I go back and rework things and tighten up things. And there's always the suggestion and here the suggestion of trees and new foliage, but not, not really detailed that much suggestion of water and, um, maybe tides fields that are just starting to turn, or maybe still, still kind of brownies from the winter too, so that there's, it's open to interpretation. What about the pinks? That's not something that I think many people see in the work that you do. That's True. And, and it's just the F the fresh blooms of spring and, uh, being apple trees or, or, uh, new buds are often very pink. And so I picked up on that in this particular is really a series of paintings. I tend to do more than one of a kind that I have to otherwise. I get too bogged down in, in details, and I try to leave a lot of the painting open and free the sky, especially the foreground can be just vague and allowing the viewer to enter it, enter the composition themselves and finish it in a way. And I, and I can't tell you what a painting is going to look like when I started it. Um, things happen. And then I see happening, then I change it. I move it around, or I develop as a little bit more, or if it's not working or I don't feel right about it. It's an emotional thing. Something that, uh, has a lot of, I hope a lot of energy can be realized from it. And, uh, I find it emotional and it's like a, some people refer to it as Chaz to a quality of jazz. I'm not a musician, so I don't want to get into that too much, but some people I've seen that because it's, uh, I improvise a lot and I, I develop things as it goes, but it's not planned out ahead of time. And it just allows it to happen and inviting the viewer to, to let it happen to them too. So a painting might grow on them a little bit until they have to finish it. It becomes their own. Tell me how you went from an early focus on photography, which you ended up not only getting I agree in, in, you said 1961, right. I'm from Michigan and being a teacher for 35 years at, at SUNY Plattsburgh to moving into more of the painting. Well, the photography started, uh, actually I started at Cornell in architecture and in fact, I feel like even my paintings have a degree of, of structure to them, uh, very abstract asymmetrical balance, not real balance, but a asymmetrical balance. But when I, uh, decided to transfer to the university of Michigan and concentrate in first and photography, which was a love of mine from high school, actually, I never took formal painting or art courses or anything like that in high school. But I did get involved in a extracurricular photography program mainly because I was dating someone and she went into the photo club and I went in, but, uh, it turned out I really got hooked on photography, working in black and white with a four by five view camera and learn the basics. And then as soon as I had in my own 35 millimeter and twin lens reflex, and especially black and white photography. So the photography also, uh, Michigan, uh, they had a program at the time and they still do, and Cornell did not. So that was another reason why Michigan was a draw. And at the same time, I started taking some painting courses and was hit with total abstraction. Now, at the same time, I had done some realistic paintings. Uh, I never took them into the classroom. This was on my own, but it was in the tradition of Andrew Wyeth. But when I look back on things, my need for realism is, is easily satisfied or more than satisfied by the realism of photography. And that's probably somewhat in the tradition of Ansell Adams and Edward Weston and, and, uh, photographers like that, Lang um, and it'd be, he came up parallel thing, but it acted as a balance. And it allowed me to go abstract in the paintings. And, uh, because at first I resisted total abstraction and all the things that were happening in the fifties and sixties and in art coming out, uh, minimal art and abstract art and abstract expressionism, and who knows what, there was a lot of things going on. And I wasn't, it wasn't what I knew when I was a little kid coming up. My parents did expose me to the Butler art museum in Youngstown, Ohio, which was my hometown. And, but that was more representational art. And I saw the work of Winslow, Homer and other artists there. Uh, but I can never be perfect. And that was another thing about photography. It gave that perfection, but it also then freed me up to go loose, free, explode with abstraction. And I look back now at some of my paintings in the sixties, and, um, they're almost more contemporary today than they were then. And they still inspire me in, in work that I do now. I see where my roots were and, uh, and they come out again too. So it's a balance in my life and maybe we some balanced. So, um, I get off on tangents at times. I talk that way, but, uh, I think it does make some sense. You met your wife, pat when you were at the university of Michigan, because she was also doing something artistic. Oh, Yes. She was a student. Uh, uh, we turned out to be finally in the same class of 61. She was a interior design major and took a number of courses in architecture and architecture, design and drafting. But the a and we had courses together in various studio courses and art history, but we really got to know each other in stagecraft, over in the theater department, we both took basic stagecraft, worked in the shop. And that's where we both started using power tools and hand tools and, and cutting and building and making things. And that's, that's a key to our whole relationship. We love making things and we support, we make different things. And she went on to, to rebuild and design. It was called design build, should design houses or rebuild old houses. And she's still doing that today, but not, not as a business just for ourselves, but, uh, she, she took that very seriously and has done a wonderful job. And with her roots in design and background, she's, uh, she's a good critic for me too. I can not, she doesn't go into detail, but I can, I can get a sense of how a painting is going just by showing it to her and her immediate reaction. And it's just a few words. Yeah. I liked that or that's not, you know, shake her head. That's not working. And, and it makes me question an area before it's done and I have to get back from my paintings. And, uh, but she's been a real support. I think, I think we work as a team very well. And, um, it has worked through our whole marriage with children and everything else, but, uh, we, we can work as a team and we can be, have common interests in the arts and all forms of art. I know that she is pretty much always with you wherever you go. So if you're at an art gallery opening in Portland, she's there, you know, she's here with you today with, for your interview. You really are a team. Yes we are. And, uh, and we have a team of dogs too, with us today. Uh, we've always had dogs and we've got a couple older Husky Siberian Huskies that were once sled dogs and retired. Uh, so she's caring for those two dogs right now by, and we kayak a lot now, too, ever since we came to Maine, we quickly picked up kayaking and that has been a, a source of inspiration. Um, I go out in the mornings, we're right on the Saint George in Thompson, but we've kayaked a lot of places in, in, um, our home is in Northern New York, in the Adirondacks lake Champlain area. We have actually traveled several times to Alaska and rented kayaks up there. I wouldn't say we're pros, but we're probably somewhat experienced. And we go out all the time. We're still using kayaks that we originally bought in the early nineties and, uh, a long, uh, sea worthy kayaks. And I'll go out on the St. George in the morning. In fact, the other morning I was out there, what am I going to say today? And I sorta did a rehearsal to myself, but I like being out on the water quiet mornings, especially as depends on the tides, because it's, mudflats otherwise, if the tide's out, there's no kayaking, it's all mud flat, but when the tide comes in and we can go out, it's nice. And we often kayak together, but also go out by myself. And I like isolation and early mornings is good. It's a good inspiration. I go along the Riverside and, uh, you see all the rock formations, uh, light quality is so important to me. And that comes from my photography too. I think I was very sensitive to the light quality in photography. My paintings are a little more opaque and it doesn't necessarily have one single light source. I kind of bounce back and forth a lot between painting and photography, how that influences me. And, uh, and it, as I said earlier, it's a balance too. There's another piece that you brought with you today. That's actually behind you, um, which will show to the people who are watching, but it's, there's a lot of blues in it. Um, I can actually, as you're talking about your kayaking, I could actually see you being inspired to create these lines that almost look like, um, inlets or, um, as you've described rock formations. Um, tell me about that piece. Well, that that's a winner feelings actually is some dark forms in there. And, uh, some, some lights it's more black and white, but even there there'll be some color in it mixed in. Um, and, uh, it, it doesn't take a sharp focus to being any one place. It's interesting because some people will look at some of my paintings they'll know, I know exactly where that is, and it isn't, it's just that it relates to their own history, their own memories of where they've been. But, uh, this suggests rocks, formations, cloud formations, uh, water light off the water, different things like that. And, uh, it's, it's called winter moods or winter feelings really. And that, uh, I I'll even kayak on the river on certain times I can get out there in the winter too. The ice formations are wonderful along the shore. And it reminds me of being in Alaska when we actually did kayak around chunks of ice, uh, icebergs as such, and, uh, took a lot of pictures up there. And those pictures didn't didn't necessarily transform in the paintings. I will sometimes use a, um, a photograph as a reference as a couple of other paintings. I brought in that, uh, one's of Monhegan island. And another one is of a Todd and those profiles are pretty accurate. And I sometimes will maybe refer back to photographs for the profile shapes, but the foregrounds and the skies are as free and open and energetic as what you might see in a painting. We were just talking about in spring and, and often very undeveloped areas so that I don't try to complete a painting. I don't get caught up in every little branch and every little detail. Now I can respect realism by others, but I just find that for me, I rather be a little more interpretive, uh, expressive, um, a little less concrete and allow a little more for the imagination to complete it. So you are telling me earlier that you will go back and forth between things that are more representational and things that are more abstract. Um, and that it's not really that you've left one area forever. It's just that you're gonna kind of circle back around to it at some point. Right. Do you, is there something that triggers your need to go from one to the other to maintain that balance or as our feeling that you have? I Really, I, yeah. I don't know quite how to answer that. Partly I don't paint every day. I do it in spurts and I paint both here. I have a studio at our place here in south Thomaston and, and, uh, I have a studio back in New York in one of the house that my wife's rebuilding. Now, anything can be a studio I've painted in the basement, I've painted in the kitchen. So I'm pretty flexible on that. I don't have to have a studio and someone wants to see my studio. It's probably going to be a disappointment. Uh, I work a lot with makeshift, but, um, I don't paint every day. And then I, and I think it's important for me not to, because then I can come back to a fresh approach. I don't get caught up in, I'll do a whole series of paintings that are similar and have some of the same feelings, but different size compositions. I work sometimes very small and other times, uh, I can go up to four by five, uh, four feet by five feet, or put them together for a diptych or a triptych, so they can become quite large, two major pieces. Uh, I also liked some of the little ones because they're done almost as gesture drawings, gesture paintings. They come very quickly, uh, and very spontaneous and I don't get caught up in details at all. And then I may go back and press, bring out a little section of it, just enough to suggest all this is a landscape. And often that is what's going on. I think I brought one of those in today. Uh, I brought a couple of little paintings in one and one is very abstract and it came out of the, uh, last, uh, year and a half of the virus. I got caught up in doing some very abstract work that reflected not only the virus, but social and political issues too. And I've called them chaos and turmoil. And I did another one and I think it was a little premature maybe, but I call is, was in January. I called it and a new day begins and it didn't quite begin then, but I had had hope, and it's just a slice of sunrise with a very dark sky, a very dark foreground, but we were coming out of a dark period. So that seemed appropriate at the time. It can be read or interpreted. Um, I don't get into a lot of trying to hidden meanings in my paintings. I don't intentionally do that. It just happens. And, uh, so to me, painting is an emotional thing. It's almost like a dance to, well, I'd like to move around when I'm painting even little ones and I'll do several at a time. I think I mentioned that before, and some of them have become little triptychs two or three small paintings together. Uh, three paintings together become a triptych, or I just keep several canvases going. So I don't overwork one canvas over another. It sounds like the, the photography maybe satisfies the more technical aspects of your mind that made me gravitated towards architecture, perhaps originally. And then the painting satisfies the kind of the other side of your mind that needs more freedom and more spontaneity It to some extent, but the photography has always been well not when I was a student, I took all sorts of things, people, places. Um, it's interesting. Early on, we went to Europe, I think on our second, second summer of marriage or a third summer. And before that we went out west. I didn't even take a lot of pictures out west. I took some, I didn't take it. We experienced just being out there. And that was fine. And the same thing when I went to Europe, when we went to Europe, I had a camera, but I realized I wasn't taking a lot of pictures. I think I had the attitude and I back now, I kind of laugh at myself. I don't want to be a typical tourist with a camera. Yeah. But I realize, and then in teaching photography, you see a lot more when you have a camera in your hand and you have to make a decision, this is the composition, or this is the composition. And you actually look a lot closer at things than you would if you're just out there, oh, that's, that's beautiful, that's marvelous or whatever. You start looking and composing. And I, the camera has taught me that. And, uh, it's a discipline, I guess I would say. And then, as I said, I really liked black and white now more recently doing digital work, but I'm more serious about my black and white photography, which was done early on. I still have a dark room here in Maine. I haven't used it a lot yet, but I still have black and white prints that are negatives that need to be printed. There's always something more to do. And, um, I think that's true, uh, with pat and I are, we both have projects to do way too many. The other day I was gathering up birchbark that had saved. I got six bags of birchbark. Well, I'll use it for kindling, but I think Jean could that be made in the something, cause that'd be, how can I use this? And I've got a whole bunch of birchbark, uh, uh, logs sitting to make furniture. But then at home, we've got a barn full of old parts of houses that path's collected and she's recycled a lot of that. And it's something we believe in recycling as much as possible. A lot of our place in Maine, our little cottage, there is recycled wood that we brought over here, large pieces of lumber and windows and doors. And now she's taking old cab, uh, old wood and making new cabinets out of them and, uh, making use of, of what's here. But, uh, it's, it's always a challenge to us and exciting, and that's how we support each other too. And we communicate a lot, which I think my paintings are a form of communication. I hope they are. And we found in our marriage that's, that's important to is so important is communication keeps things going, Pat was a contracting. It sounds like on, on whatever level it was back at a time where the lumberyards didn't see a lot of women That's right. Yeah. She had to overcome some, some, some salespeople or counter people that just didn't are you serious type of thing, you know, but she was, and she knew what she was doing. And often she knew more than they knew, um, how to do it. And she's tackled learning how to do things. And she's taking courses at the workshop here in Maine, in west west Rockport school for craftsmanship furniture, craftsmanship, and she can do really fine work, but she's also done some, you know, basic construction work too. And I, I get involved in that as, as, um, uh, labor. Uh, it's not very often my, my design, although I could design, I, I have enough other things going on because I did have a background in architecture and we both really liked to see architecture and see different ways, how people live, how buildings exist and, and, uh, the whole world of, uh, the architectural environment. But my paintings you'll notice it's not natural landscape. And same with the photography is I leave out of paint, Whiteface mountain, a big ski area in New York. I've never put the ski slopes in and just kind of peanut before that ever happened. But, uh, and leave out highways and telephone poles and everything like that. It's the natural landscape that I'm really drawn to and including the greenery and the wildlife, the, the light, the quality of light, uh, setting sun. I like to see sunrises and sunsets. They're exciting. I don't paint them very often, but to me there, I like to see a new day coming in. Uh, and, and the end of the day, too, Have your children in any way been influenced to engage in artistic activities? I think so. Um, we have three, uh, our daughter, uh, is I think more inclined to being involved in decorating in and landscaping her yard and decorating her house and painting very sensitive to it and very tasteful and our, our middles, our son, uh, the older of the middle boy or the middle of the three kids, he actually takes very good photographs, but I can't yet. I have yet to get him to take it a step or two further, but I like his eye, his vision when he sees how he photographs it. And the third has got into all sorts of projects from sculpture and abstract paintings to photo collages. And he w he works out of Burlington, Vermont as a freelance artist. And, uh, he has, uh, probably more of the way of producing art than, than the other two, but they, they all have a creative bend to them. Put it that way, I guess it's in their DNA. Is that how you'd put it? That sounds about right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Did you see art education shift in any way over the course of time that you spent, um, working at SUNY Plattsburgh? Ooh, I don't know quite how to answer that one. Um, no, I, I can't say looking back, I saw in, maybe it did. And maybe it has what I liked about it was the one-on-one, but I was teaching studio courses and, um, and no one else in the department had a background in photography. So I was pretty free to handle things the way I saw fit to do. And I really liked working with students on a one-to-one basis or we'd have group critiques of works. Um, and, uh, my goal was really to, to bring out the creativity in the students that I didn't want them doing things like I was doing necessarily. I hate on in black and white photography, they had to learn the basic skills of making a print in the dark room. Nowadays, it's just using the camera, the digital cameras, but I really was retired before we got into much digital work. Although I saw that coming and that was good. And they still, where I taught, they still teach black and white wet photography, which I think has great, tremendous, but it was nice to work with students that maybe they only took one course, but they discovered something in themselves that they could do. And they got the, it was somewhat not as immediate as digital now, but it was an immediate result compared to painting or something like that. It didn't take days and days to make a paint like a painting in a few hours or an hour. They could actually make a print and have a fine piece, but to help them see the possibilities in their work. And, uh, it was exciting and it still is. And students get back to me at various times and some have gone on professionally too, but many of them, it was just the liberal arts course that opened up their minds and, and a way of being accepting. You've been a very important, uh, part of the Portland art gallery community for quite a few years now. And I think you, you bring something special to that, that group of artists. Do you find benefit in being part of this community and in taking part in the openings and connecting With people you were down there just the other day to the last opening, and I've gotten to know, I don't know them all personally or anything like that. I really need to, well, it's been hard the last year to have gatherings, but, uh, I like seeing the work and it's so diverse. Uh, and, uh, that's, to me is a real plus to, um, um, probably one of the more abstract artists, but there's some that are even far more abstract, uh, totally abstract than my work. And then some that are very representational. And, uh, I like, I like that diversity. And, uh, I think people seeing all that are at work, uh, but it's been really a gift to be part of that environment. And I've had other galleries too throughout the was one harvest square in Rocklin. And I had a gallery in Charleston, South Carolina that was very successful, but then they closed not because of the virus, but they closed after many years. But, uh, someone from there went out to California is open one. So I'm out there now too. So it's, it's, uh, not painting so much. Well, a lot of my paintings, I think appeal or have a coastal feeling to them, but, uh, I can turn around and there's other paintings. I show that, uh, in New York, although I don't well, like plastic now is showing my work a gallery there. And therefore some of them are a little more representational, let's say Whiteface mountain or the, or the green mountains of Vermont. Uh, and then I've had, well, I had a show here, Parlin of my Alaskan work, which was a nice opportunity to bring that all out again. And that included photography as well as paintings. That was one of the first shows I've had since leaving college. Cause my, I work at a college, we'd have faculty shows and I'd always show both. Some people got to know me as a painter, others as a photographer, and they didn't realize it did both. But, uh, here I had a chance in the Alaskan show at Portland too, to have a whole series of photographs, black and white photographs, as well as my paintings. Well, we're very fortunate to have you working with us and I've enjoyed all the conversations that you and I have had over the years regarding your art and also your life. I've also enjoyed my conversations with pat. You are, um, really kind of an inspiration when it comes to teamwork and relationships. And I think that's not something that we see all the time, these days. Thank you. Thank you. I've been speaking with artist William, bill Crosby. Who's represented by the Portland art gallery. I really encourage you to come to some of our openings cause there's a good chance. He'll be there. You can meet he and pat also look online for his work, uh, see his work in person at the gallery. I've appreciated the time that I've spent with you today. Bill, thank you for coming in and talking with Us. Well, thank you very much. I've enjoyed it. It's fun. And thank you for joining us on radio Maine. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle.