Father’s Art: Works of Billy Charles Duvall [4]

Detail of 3rd painting

Three Paintings of Dancers

By André Duvall

When launching this series, I envisioned each installment of my father Billy Charles Duvall’s artwork having some unifying theme, technique, or history. Dad easily came up with the theme of today’s three original works: dancing. Each painting shows a dancer in movement, drawing our eyes to the details in the folds and colors of their clothing. Dad creates striking contrasts of each dancer with the colors and stillness of the surrounding environments, yet each dancer seems right at home.

Untitled:

Oil on masonite, 24¼" x 21". 1983.

Dad wanted to explore the idea that loneliness can exist within a big crowd. He remarks that perhaps^* the two people in the foreground box seat are lonely, but the feeling might^* be found among anyone in the audience (and the dancer might be lonely, I add). Subconsciously, he believes this work was also influenced by Edward Hopper, who did many paintings exploring isolation, including some within a theater. You might compare this painting with Dad’s “Study of Two on the Aisle” by Edward Hopper, in the second installment of “Father’s Art.”
    I find it interesting that Dad’s primary focus was on loneliness, and not the dancer directly, whose presence and performance are ostensibly the central focus of the painting, if one is asked at first glance. The dancer could certainly be part of the loneliness, but the hall and all the people within it comprise the actual central idea. Dad also points out that there is a large spotlight, which creates a diagonal line, and there is an orchestra pit below the stage.
    Dad almost threw this painting away. It sat for years in a corner of a room until after his retirement. Adding varnish greatly revived what had become quite dull.

Star Dance:

Oil on masonite, 16½" x 6½". 1984.
(title in all caps on back of painting) 
Framed by Red Door Gallery in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

The dancer is on top of the clouds on a starry night, and we see a falling star. Dad debated whether to make the falling star look like a real falling star, or to use the “star-shaped” fantasy version. He decided he wanted the painting to exhibit magic realism. The dancer and her pose are inspired by an old (likely black-and-white) photograph in an old magazine (likely Antiques), which he could not locate. He added gold to the tail of the falling star and to the dancer’s hair to create unity of color. Dad gifted this painting to his sister, Lisa, and it hangs in her bedroom (which was formerly my grandmother’s bedroom). She kindly brought it over to his house while I was in town photographing this installment.
    Fresh, free, benevolent, timeless, lonely, peaceful, and magical power are words that describe my emotional response and thoughts when viewing this poem. This was one of Dad’s works that I was not familiar with until this project, perhaps making it even more striking to me.

Untitled:

Oil on masonite, 7½" x 13". 1990.

Here, we see a home in the interior of a cave, and across the valley, you can see a mountain with several caves (the darkened areas). The scene is probably in Eastern Europe.^* Some of the gypsies in those regions lived in caved-out areas of mountains. Every time Dad views this painting, he thinks he portrayed the mirror image of the dancer incorrectly. As we were viewing this painting in preparation for this cataloguing, my mom tested the thought using a doll and a mirror, and it seems the rendering is correct.
    In the 2018 anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, viewable on Netflix, there is a duel scene in which Buster calculates the angle he needs to shoot his gun using a mirror, which requires great accuracy. Dad and I watched this scene together during my visit, and he made the connection between Buster’s calculated use of a mirror and Dad’s own efforts to get the angle of the painting to appear accurate.

    The basic shape of the mirror is modeled after an antique mirror that hangs in my parents’ living room. He wasn’t intending to create an exact replica. Mom identifies with this painting, because the landscape reminds her of her early childhood in Western Honduras (even though the scene of the painting might be in Eastern Europe).


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* You may have noticed that Dad often describes the locations of, and stories behind, his paintings with words like “might” and “probably.” This intentional open-ended approach is a theme I have noticed in his works so far. Both the viewer and the artist are given great latitude in interpretation.

Copyright © 2020 by André Duvall & Billy Charles Duvall