Three by Three: Guest Artists in Focus
QUESTION 2. How does the act of layering—paper over paint, graphite over photo—mirror the way you experience memory or time?
ANSWER 2. The layering of my work allows me to relate to how every person is like a piece of my artwork, and like an onion, more beneath the surface than immediately meets the eye. Providing me with the reinforced insight that some people are true masterpieces and others just assholes.
William Maltese
Mixed Media Pointillism
BIO: I started out as a writer, my first published article, about my search for Inca treasure in the Amazon Basin, published in Argosy men’s magazine when I was at Army Boot Camp at Fort Ord, California. It was after I was honorably discharged at Fort Lewis, Washington, rooming with friends in Seattle, that I was introduced to Gordon Woodside of the prestigious Woodside Gallery with whom I became good friends and who introduced me to the Seattle art community that included such stars like Guy Anderson, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, and Kenneth Callahan whose works I collected before I put any paint of my own to canvas. Although it was inevitable that, surrounded as I was by such artists and their superlative art, that I would eventually try my own hand. In result, I honed my individual style with a series of colorful Poisonous Plants and a series of truncated male torsos (for which I was usually the model). Though I’ve traveled the world, I continue to reside in the Pacific Northwest.
QUESTION 1. What do the tiny, repeated marks in your work mean to you—patience, rhythm, or something closer to meditation?
ANSWER 1. The tiny, repeated marks (pointillism) in my work have honed my ability to achieve patience, rhythm, concentration, and meditation. For which I give thanks.
Apeldom Tulip
Part of my Poisonous Plant Series, in my mixed-media pointillistic style.
Now in a private collection.
Mi Chaqueta y Yo
A self-portrait, in my mixed-media pointillistic style, hung in the Vatican City’s Palazzo della Cancelleria – later in Ragussa and Florence, Italy, galleries, as part of a traveling OMAGGIO A FRIDA showcase. Now in the Maltese private collection.
Self-portrait #6
Part of my Trucated Male Torso series, in my mixed-media pointillistic style.
Now in a private collection.
All copyright and reproduction rights are reserved by William Maltese
Artwork may not be reproduced in any form without the artist's express written permission.
QUESTION 3. When viewers step close and see every mark, color fleck, and fragment—what do you hope they feel in that nearness?
ANSWER 3. I only want the viewers to feel whatever it is they feel, even if they feel nothing. While I can always hope that a viewer achieves some kind of intimacy with the detail of my mixed-media pointillistic textures, I learned a long time ago that there’s no pleasing everyone. If viewers don’t like my work, they simply don’t like it. ‘Nough said.
VIEWING ON MOBILE DEVICE?
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW..
VIEWING ON MOBILE DEVICE?
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW..
VIEWING ON MOBILE DEVICE?
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW..