
Spotlight Artist
Billy Hassell
West
Artist Statement
My work is a symbolic and narrative response to nature and seeks
a balance between realism and abstraction. I work primarily in oil
paint, but I also produce original hand-pulled color lithographs
and, when I travel, watercolors and pencil drawings. I develop
ideas from the watercolors and drawings rather than from
photographs in the paintings I produce in my studio. I have been
influenced by Mexican and American folk art, nineteenth-century
Japanese woodblock prints, and botanical studies.
Over the years, I have become increasingly concerned and involved
with environmental issues and have received commissions from
Audubon Texas and the Texas Nature Conservancy to produce
color etchings and color lithographs featuring the flora and fauna
of Texas that highlight the organizations’ conservation efforts
around the state and the Gulf Coast. Many of my paintings feature
birds. I see birds as both symbols and as measures of the relative
wellbeing of the environment they occupy. The work, as a whole,
represents a celebration of nature in all its fullness.
Artist's Additional works
Works shared by the artist outside of their featured New American Paintings selections


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