| William Shepherd generally paints inanimate things,
such as this bowl and table coverings, but those things in turn,
as happens
here with Bird and Bees, often have animate subjects which activate
the title. Birds and bees carry a second interpretation in the
area of fertility, but when the same bee pot is seen on top of
a weaving containing rows of bees in another painting, it’s
title, Swarm, is also very animated. The natural world rarely appears
in his paintings, which generally include handcrafted objects – pottery,
needlework, woven textiles, folkloric, tourist, kitsch, and quotidian
objects that might be found at flea markets.
Shepherd paints directly from life, but setting up the still
life arrangement is a long and painstaking process of arranging,
photographing, rearranging, relighting, and rephotographing it,
then putting it in the computer where he perfects it before starting
to paint. The result is a finely adjusted, richly colored artifice.
Shepherd grew up in Wyoming exploring the outdoors and drawing.
After serving in Vietnam he studied art at the University of
Wyoming and painted realistic landscapes. After his 1980 move
to New Mexico he painted tropical fish and then began the still
lifes of things he collected on his travels in Mexico and the
Southwest which still occupy him.
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