Stanisich Exhibit in Bay Area Gallery March 31 – May 12

Paintings and watercolors created by Ezra Stiles own Bill Stanisich will be featured at the prestigious Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, CA from March 21 thru May 12, 2018.  There will be an opening reception on Saturday, April 7^th from 6-8PM, and all Bay Area Yalies are welcome to attend.  Admission is free.

The exhibit will feature works from his latest collection of paintings and watercolors of Land’s End, a wild cliff just west of the Golden Gate Bridge, never tamed or citified. (An earlier road has been reclaimed by nature and now is impassible.)

Bill returned to the area many times over the past 40 years, and sometimes painted the same scenes, sometimes representationally, sometimes more abstractly — but always reflecting his then-current vision of the area.

The landscape itself was modified over time primarily by nature. But even the same, unchanged physical scene is presented differently, as the seasons, the growth/death of plants, animal trails or the light changing by time of day or the ebb and flow of San Francisco’s famous fog influenced Bill’s insights.

The critic Maria Porges, who went to Yale (BA, 1975) and is an Associate Professor at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, commented on the collection: “In many, the leaning bodies of backlit trunks divide and define the painting’s rectangle, the lines of their branches suggesting a kind of brooding text as the light spilling through them becomes a silvery dappled abstraction.”

Bill explains, “These paintings are mostly intimate scenes of glens and copses rather than panoramic views of the sea and cliff.”

More of the images can be seen online, and they have been included in a lovely book, available directly from Bill.

Background

William Stanisich has been a serious painter since elementary school, where he was lucky to learn watercolor technique from an eccentric but charismatic painter.  He went to the San Francisco Art Institute for the three years of prep school rather than study with the art teacher at his regular school.  The courses at SFAI were all-day on Saturdays, taught by professional artists in an atmosphere of freedom and seriousness.

At Yale he took painting and color courses but he learned the most from Vincent Scully and other History of Art luminaries, the pivotal experiences that led to a lifetime of painting.

His first exhibition was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artists Gallery, in 1985. Since then he has had dozens of exhibitions, including Galerie Beckel-Odille-Boicos in Paris and at the Charles Clark Museum in Montana.  He has participated in many invitational auctions, most recently the Laguna Museum and Lymelight Foundation. His paintings are included in many significant public and private collections.

Further Information

** DAPHNE: Apollo chased the nymph Daphne until she pleaded for help from Ladon, her father. A heavy numbness seized her limbs, bark closed over her breasts, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast into slow-growing roots, her face was lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left.