Father’s Art: Works of Billy Charles Duvall [9]

His Only
Self-Portrait

By André Duvall

After a long hiatus, I am excited to resume sharing more artwork of my father, Billy Charles Duvall. If you enjoy this post and his artwork, I invite you to visit any of my eight earlier Father’s Art posts on Moristotle & Co. In the first installment, on September 25, 2019, you can read some background on Dad’s hobby, and about my inspiration for this project.
    Today, we view the first and only self-portrait of Billy Charles Duvall.

Self-Portrait. Summer 1979. 7" x 9". Oil on canvas panel.

This is an early work (he began painting in 1978). He was 34 years old. On his first trip to meet my mom in Honduras, he wore a polo shirt, the colors and patterns of which inspired his choice of clothing for this painting. In my posts of Dad’s early works, I frequently refer to his methods of self-instruction, which involved re-creating existing paintings of others, and using photographs of buildings and locales from books and magazines as studies. In this case, he set up a mirror as a form of training and experimentation in the downstairs garage of the garage apartment he and Mom lived in when they were first married. He was simply curious if he could create a self-portrait. Like with other early paintings, he signed his last name on the side with no first initial. I hadn’t yet been born when he painted the portrait, but it sure looks like the Dad I’ve seen in photographs from his thirties!

You may be able to guess that Dad intended the locale of the next painting to be “somewhere off the Amalfi coast of Italy.”

The Monk. August 1980. 9" x 12". Oil on Canvas Panel.

Dad was inspired by seeing a black-and-white postcard of a monk sitting in the pergola of a monastery (now a hotel). Dad was reading about the monk Thomas Merton at the time.
    Among the many small details one can find, Dad enjoyed pointing out to me the shadow of the cane, and the grapevine in the foreground.

The idea for the third painting

The Letter. 1984. 10" x 13½" Oil on canvas panel.

was inspired by a photo in the book Spanish American Life by John A. Crow, 1941, with the caption, “View of the Public Market at Guadalajara Mexico by Otto Bischoff.”

Dad elaborated upon certain details in the photo to create his scene. These include the advertisements on one column in the photo expanded to all of the columns, the planks of wooden floor visible in the lowest portion of the photo given much more visibility and area, and merchandise visible at the market.
    Then Dad added new elements based on his own experiences. There’s an envelope on the floor, and the woman is reflecting on the letter. Dad and Mom exchanged letters across international lines before they met. He added a parrot looking off to the side. He says the painting needed something special in the upper half to balance out the painting.
    This painting was given as a gift to his sister Clara Jean. It hung in her house for years until 2021, when she returned it to him while he visited her home. She had placed it in a white frame with glass, but the glass glared in photos, so he replaced the frame with what you see here.

Copyright © 2023 by André Duvall & Billy Charles Duvall