BILL'S ART

Soooo I rehung this painting Bill Cullum (for whom this blog is named) gave to me back in 1995.  Its part of a series of four (two of which I own) but I left this one unhung after it fell off my wall several years ago.

It's a mixed media piece -- oil paint and photographs on wood with an epoxy resin coat.  Its huge.  50 inches by 38 inches and it weighs 55 pounds.  So hanging it is a motherfucker.  And keeping it on the wall is too.

The photographs used in the piece were taken by Bill in the Jardin Tuileries and the underground catacombs below Paris.  I can't recall where the barn was located.

The New York Times, in their review of the show in which this piece appeared, called the painting "Sweet and resonant -- yet somewhat derivative of the Starn Twins."

OH! EM! GEE!  I thought poor Bill's head was going to explode when he read that, he was so enraged.  And of course, for years (decades really) afterward my younger brother Ken and I would tell Bill, upon seeing some new piece of art that he had painted, that we found it, "sweet and resonant -- yet somewhat derivative."

Interesting thing about this piece.... Bill used an epoxy to coat and set the entire piece and its thick and hard like heavy glass.  But he hadn't quite perfected the formula for the resin and if you look closely at the bottom of the painting you can see the drips from it.  And those drips were sticky to the touch and ever so slowly dripping further off the wood.....for over ten years!  It was truly a piece of evolving artwork.

It finally fully dried in 2007.

Bill was hugely talented and brilliant and totally fucking nuts.  I miss him.