Willy Bo Richardson was featured on the cover of Pasatiempo, the arts magazine of The Santa Fe New Mexican. The article offers an in-depth look at Willy Bo Richardson’s artistic path, including both the challenges and breakthroughs that have shaped his work.
Willy Bo Richardson has fielded variations of the query “Why do you paint stripes?” — including from his then-8-year-old daughter — so frequently that he good-naturedly bases his artist statement around the question.
The short answer is, “they’re not just stripes.” A more complex response is revealed upon closer inspections of works featured in Time Dissolves Here, an exhibition of his works that opens Friday, December 5, at Nüart Gallery. Carrying and Soaring 3 resembles a depiction of a beach sunset when viewed at a 90-degree angle; Carrying and Soaring 15 could be a close-up of a psychedelically colored tree trunk; and the patterns and colors in Time Dissolves Here 4 combine elements of the surfaces of Saturn and Neptune. The latter unintentionally reflects the cosmic revelation behind the Santa Fe abstract painter’s thematically linked works.
“I was finishing my last semester at UT Austin, and I had a once-in-a-lifetime dream,” Richardson says. “I dreamt that I went to the beginning of time, and I and all other beings were shooting particles of light. The whole universe was a vibration of rainbows, and all beings were connected. It was total joy — like, total bliss. When I woke, there was a language streaming in my mind; it was an ancient language. I said to myself, ‘Wow, what language is that?’ And a voice very clearly responded, like an announcer on the radio: ‘Danish.’”
A few days later, he was invited to an on-campus lecture on Buddhism, delivered by a man named Ole Nydhal from Denmark. Richardson figured he’d better attend, given the synchronicity between his dream and that reality.
Carrying And Soaring 16 can be viewed in Willy Bo Richardson’s (above) exhibition Time Dissolves Here, opening Friday, December 5, at Nüart Gallery on Canyon Road.
“When I went to meet him for the first time, I went up for a blessing,” Richardson says. “He was fixing my collar, and he said, ‘I saw you fly. What were you thinking about?’ So he was also aware about this dream that I had. Later, he was sitting on a blue-and-white-striped tapestry. For whatever reason, those stripes left this impression of … clear light.”
It was a powerful and lasting impression, manifesting in the form of vertical patterns in his oil-and-acrylic works that are part of Time Dissolves Here. The exhibition concludes on the first day of winter, and he says the featured works focus on the winter solstice — which occurs December 21 — and how to accept and embrace a dark time, rather than pine for the long days of midsummer.
Richardson assembles playlists of music that emanates from several speakers at his studio, a converted garage on Santa Fe’s south side. He’s in good artistic company, as Salvador Dalí bathed in the sounds of dramatic classical music while working, while Jackson Pollock preferred jazz and Henri Matisse gravitated toward opera and classical. Richardson’s tastes are decidedly more modern; a recently created playlist includes electronic-music artist Four Tet, contemporary jazz group the Neil Cowley Trio, and post-rock band A Winged Victory for the Sullen.
Richardson has little idea how the finished product will look when he begins painting.
“I start out collecting ideas and thoughts, as well as putting together the music playlist, and certain colors will start to come forward,” Richardson says. “The first step is laying down that first ground color. Anything can happen at any point; if I feel like I know what I’m doing too much, then I know I’ve put myself in a corner. As long as I feel like there’s a mystery and exploration and unknowns, I know it’s going well. When I get to the final glaze layers, it’s just a call and response: A color comes to mind, I mix it, and as I’m mixing it, anything can change. It can turn out to be a different color.”
Willy Bo Richardson, Time Dissolves Here, diptych
Like many visual artists who have attained a certain level of fame, Richardson has a Wikipedia page dedicated to him. He perceives it as a potential problem rather than you’ve-made-it affirmation.
“I think it’s actually dangerous to be popular,” he says. “Our daughter had social media when she was 13, and I was reading in The Wall Street Journal that girls ages 12 to 15, just by having an Instagram account, are 10 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts and depression. We shut down all her social media, and she was kicking and screaming: ‘All my friends have this. How am I going to have any friends?’ A month later, she thanked us.”
Richardson shut down his own Instagram account in solidarity. A few years later, he told an attendee at a party that his work was featured in an upcoming show. That person checked the Meta-owned app and was surprised to find no evidence of the exhibition.
“So I started a new Instagram account,” Richardson says. “Wikipedia is not social media, but I think it is still subject to all the whims of our society. Anyone can edit it. I don’t like the idea that when I’m dead, somebody who doesn’t like me could frame something in a weird way if they wanted to.”
Richardson opts to focus inward, rather than on elements he can’t control, and meditates frequently.
“It’s called Diamond Way Karma Kagyu, which is very nuts-and-bolts and geared toward modern-thinking people,” he says of the Buddhist practice he follows. “I’d say the most significant thing it does is keep me from taking myself seriously.”
Original Article – Pasatiempo, Santa Fe New Mexican: Willy Bo Richardson’s Ups and downs
Visit the official site of Willy Bo Richardson