Father’s Art: Works of Billy Charles Duvall [6]

Detail of “Island Woman”

Two Paintings
and a Bonus

By André Duvall

As you may have gathered from the Father’s Art posts so far, Dad favors working with oil paint. “Island Woman” is one of the few cases in which he uses some acrylic, in order to give a flat, two-dimensional look to the black portion of the painting. He also chose to use the rough side of the Masonite to give it more of a canvas look and texture. “Island Woman” is Dad’s second open-frame painting, inspired by the use of black in his first one, which will be featured in a future post.

Island Woman:

Mixed media: oil on Masonite (colors), acrylic on Masonite (black), straw,
woven string, keyring, screw with eyelet, wooden trim frame;
10¼" x 8½". Fall 1985.

A photo of a woman carrying a long bundle of straw on her head or shoulder (seen in a magazine) inspired the use of straw bundled together. The green-painted bundle is held together by woven string. A keyring and screw with eyelet serve as an earring.
    Wanting to capture the silhouette of a woman, Dad prepped for creating the open frame by drawing experimental outlines. He loved the result, which he said looks like the piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The angle at which we see the woman might not be an exact profile, but instead slightly from the rear (how he sees it), as though she is looking away. He did not want to include an eye so as not to define the direction she is facing and viewing.
    The straw separates the woman from the background, but the background also continues the shape of her head, or of her head plus a headdress or turban, which eventually become the vastness of the ocean. A bank of clouds is visible at the horizon, and in the lower-left corner, the waves have reached the rocks of the shoreline.
    Dad says that if the painting is hung, it will blend well no matter what color the wall is, as long as it isn’t too dark, which changes the intended effect of the silhouette.

Bermuda:

Oil on Canvas Panel, 6" x 4". Summer 1980.

Dad had planned to paint this with just his finger. He grabbed a brush towards the end to do the small details – the small white flowers, the lady, the windows, and the yellow on the trees. He couldn’t do it with just a finger. However, the use of a finger for the rest of the painting created a neat effect: you can see fingerprints that don’t really look like fingerprints, but thick brushstrokes. Stippled clouds are coming in and floating by, probably part of a scattered thunderstorm, as you can see rain in the distance.
    The lady’s headband was added in June 2020, as well as some of the white caps and a reworking of the clouds. The basic painting was already there. Dad just added a few modifications. I like the thickness of the paint rising from the surface.

The bonus: When our Aunt Clara died (one of my grandmother’s sisters), Dad helped clean out her house. He kept a few items, like a couple of old radios and gourds (he didn’t get much), and he found a painting of our cousin Mary Alice Condley. He forgot about the painting (it was not framed), and rediscovered it not too long ago when looking for some of his own old paintings to include in Father’s Art. The back of the painting gives the following information:
    Painted in Arkansas. May 1981. Copy of William Alexander’s painting. Oil. Mary A. Condley. 8" x 10". Dad and I googled “William Alexander mountain scenes” and discovered a multitude of them! Many were similar in their effect, but none seemed to be the one she modeled. It is beautiful and makes me think of scenes of the Arctic. “Arctic scene” was featured yesterday in the 18th installment of Mary Alice’s column, Posthumously Speaking.

Copyright © 2020 by André Duvall & Billy Charles Duvall