About

My life in art began with poetry. Structures of transcendence in patterns of words. Wittgenstein said that “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.” The keyboard of the imagination was where I wanted to be. The State University of New York at Albany, where I went to college, was the home of The New York State Writers Institute. I was fortunate to be surrounded by and study with great writers.

My first real job after graduation was at Pratt Institute. The job title was Writer, Office of the President. In this capacity, I wrote about everything that was most important to Pratt, a leading center for the study of art, design, and architecture. There I was exposed to the full spectrum of visual arts and began to paint. I was fortunate to meet and correspond with Rudolf Arnheim and Brice Marden, both of whom impacted the way I thought about painting. I also helped develop the Center for Morphological Studies in the School of Architecture and immersion in morphology changed the way I thought about the world. And Santiago Calatrava was an advisor, which in retrospect was way cooler than I was aware at the time.

Not long after Pratt I was already exhibiting work at galleries on Long Island and New York City. For a few years I was represented by Long Fine Art – a gallery that specialized in Abstract Expressionists and Color Field painters, including Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Milton Avery, Sam Francis, among others. The New York Times reviewed a one-man show of mine and said of my work: “Willard paints luminous canvases that are suggestive of primitive mysteries.” 

MIT published my paintings and essays in its journals Terra Nova and Leonardo. My work traveled around Europe in an exhibition entitled “Verbindungen,” where I was part of the 8-person American Pavillion that included the work of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. 

I became interested in the drawings of architect Louis Kahn, in particular his drawings for the Dominican Motherhouse project. The Motherhouse project is often referred to as an unrealized masterpiece and the drawings’ incompleteness and suggestiveness intrigued me. I submitted a proposal to The University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture, home of the Louis Kahn Archive, to create original art in collaboration with Kahn’s Motherhouse drawings. These paintings and an essay explaining the work appears here. 

My next body of work came from the beach. Inspired by Hans Meinhardt’s work on the algorithmic beauty of sea shells and Benoit Mandelbrot’s writing on the fractal geometry of nature, I created a series of “shell paintings” in which the shells are deployed like brushstrokes and arranged in patterns based on size, shape, and texture. One of these paintings appeared on the cover of Whalebone Magazine’s Afternoon Delight. These paintings and an essay explaining the work appears here. 

Right now, I’m at work on new paintings that stylistically are akin to DeKooning in their thick brushstrokes, energetic movements, vibrant colors, and complex layering of paint. These new pieces are inspiring me. They are wordless poems written on the keyboard of the imagination.