This content was published: November 1, 2003. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
William Dyas Garnett – Drawings
Rock Creek Helzer Gallery
November and December 2003
Although I have found extensive outlets for much of my work in murals, theater and teaching, I have always maintained drawing as the root and strength of these endeavors. I have a great respect for drawing, which to me is where the search, stumble and love of the artist, shines the “loudest”. The graphic language of drawing remains a lifeline to the many excursions of painting.
Also important to me has been the overwhelming chronicles of art available in our time. I do not see this graphic past as “new and unproved” progress, but rather as a living and growing language that each person and period may speak, reconstruct and infuse to expel the perceived chaos of their time. I continually copy (paraphrase) other artists in order to dissect arts history with my hand, not my head.
Two of the strongest influences on my work has been the reconstructability of cubism and the contrapuntal “fugue-like” character of Baroque.
My method of arriving at a finished work is to start from many factual studies with the intention of discovering the living geometry buried in the “flesh” of the subject. I have found that the abstract shape has more reality than literal representation; behind every physical phenomenon lies a structural truth that goes on beyond the individual to the universal. Now begins the reorganizing of the elements into the painting in order to establish the idea and multiply the possibilities. The painting is kept open and fluid by starting with water-based casein as a means of quick and major changes. A time arrives when it is essential to continue in oil.
Each of us in his own way, may hope to draw forth our unique realities; I would hope the language to do so may be kept alive for the job at hand.
Mural painting
As the snail lives in his spiral world, the bee in its hexagonal shafts, so man is generally born, lives and dies in a cubical of space. The verticals and horizontals of this cube represent his need for logical order.
It is given to mural painters to work in and with this world of geometric complexes. A well designed mural should answer these spatial rooms and walls with a corresponding illusory painted space. If it is to be a mural, not just a painting on a wall, it needs to accept this subservient position to architecture.
A mural that works with the architecture accepts in its makeup ingredients that could be called abstract – its horizontals, verticals, and diagonals will work with the existing wall movements. A strong mural will echo the mathematical relationships that underlie all architecture. But the painting on the wall needs to relay much more than “art solutions” to the onlooker. It is also a collection of images in which a community may share a common idea and heritage. For its intended public, art-may be a side interest while a major theme, social, religious or historical, is digested. The muralist must fulfill this very real need for familiar images in order to bring into focus and reveal the esthetics. This requires a “story telling” style for the artist who adopts so public an art form.
Governed as he is by architecture, the mural painter cannot capture nature as casually or as convincingly as the easel painter. Neither can he forego nature as the abstractionist. He must find a comfortable balance between these two rather contradictory poles.
It is these principles that contribute to the ongoing tradition of good mural painting; the tradition of heroic characters and themes weighted with human significance, so suited to the sheer size and public function of walls.
