William M. Simpson
Oils
10 Reed Hill Road
Granby, CT 06035
860.653.3079
simpson.design@cox.net
Education
B.A. English, University of Connecticut
B.F.A. Painting, University of Connecticut, 1975
M.F.A. Painting, Bowling Green State University, 1980
Art History and Studio Teaching Assistant
Recent Exhibitions
Gregory James Gallery, Kent, CT & New Milford, CT 2006
Diane Birdsall Gallery, Old Lyme, CT 2006
J. Vallee Brunelle Fine Art, Granby, CT 2005 & 2007
Ellen Traut Collection, Hartford, CT 2003
Promenade Gallery, Bushnell Theatre, Hartford, CT 2002
Corporate Art Consultants
Hartford Fine Art & Framing, East Hartford, CT
JSO Art Associates, Westport, CT
Professional Organizations
Member, Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts
Founding Member, Granby Artists Association
About the Artist and His Work
William Simpson is a keen observer who plays the edge in his paintings – the edge between light and dark, surface and depth, sun and shade, movement and stillness. In his landscape paintings one can experience the radiating heat of the sun reflecting off a bright surface and find relief in the cool shadows in the distance. The images are of moments in time– caught on canvas before they sift through ones fingers like sand. Simpson observes many, many moments in one place, and then there appears one occasion that sharply delineates a tension, a timbre of light that is worthy of expression. He has a deep desire to capture the quality of color or pattern as it changes across a surface and release it into a painting that forever remembers that particular moment.
When viewing his paintings of water, one has the sensation of walking alongside Simpson, searching the dark edges of a sandbar where the sand slides into deeper water and being lucky enough to spot a couple of stripers gliding effortlessly across the bar. Their flanks ripple and flash in the light cast by the broken currents on the surface, the sand beneath them dances in its own patterns from the light. Or you find yourself with your feet in the cold water of a stream, standing stock-still and holding your breath so you don’t disturb the trout that hover in the shadow of the large boulders nearby.