When Bill Farnsworth tries to recall his earliest memories, one in particular sticks out. Like many childhood memories, the truth of it resides in the malleable ether of his mind, surfacing more as an impression laden with preverbal connotations that only later take on any sort of concrete meaning. “I remember drawing on the walls of my crib,” he says, “and I was doodling birds for some reason.” By the time he was in third grade, he could draw a pretty good Donald Duck.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN
“I used to sell those drawings for a nickel to my classmates.” He was also a class clown who would get in trouble for laughing whenever his buddy Randy would let one rip. This was in New Milford, Connecticut, in the ’60s. Many Donald Duck drawings later—and after a degree from Ringling College of Art and Design and a successful career illustrating children’s books—he put enough nickels together to take a two-week vacation down to Disneyworld with his wife and two daughters, aged eight and nine at the time. “We drove down in my mom’s Cadillac,” he says, “and spent a week there and a week on Siesta Key.” Rinsing sand off his feet beat shoveling snow, apparently, and the rest is history. “The second house we looked at in Venice is the house we’re in now.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN
He talks a lot about his childhood and his family, his career and the outdoors. Before anyone ever even gets eyes on his paintings, Farnsworth reads like some sort of rose-colored archetype of a man, the kind of guy that pops up on every page of a family photo album, always smiling or holding a baby, always appearing to possess a level of grace with his conditions. And it’s this same grace and warmth that informs his work as a painter.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN.
The particulars of Farnsworth’s approach rest comfortably within the traditional tenets of the original champions of en plein air. A typical day might see him at a beach near his Venice home with a canvas nestled into a tripod easel, his oil paints and brushes inside a wooden box with an assortment of other implements. Dressed in the cargo shorts and polo shirt that is the uniform of any sensible middle-aged dad, he begins by letting the scene make an impression on him. And it is in these moments of observation where Farnsworth truly takes the original intent of the early plein air impressionists to its masterful conclusion.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN
“When you paint plein air, you start to understand what light does on location and you’re affected by it,” he says. His work captures the changing light and the passage of time at the scene. There is a dual sense of movement and stillness in the way he renders the dappling of light through the boughs of a tree or the dynamic motion of a wave mid-break. If a viewer is able to take the whole piece in at once, it appears like a realistic snapshot of a subject, only to deconstruct into piecemeal brushstrokes upon closer inspection, shattering the illusion of a static reality. It can only be accomplished when the artist is truly present, observing deeply the scene before them, letting it permeate their senses.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN
While it undoubtedly imbues his landscape portrayals with a sense of presence and empathy, his work expresses the most care when it includes his own family. “I like to joke that it was worth keeping our kids alive just to have grandkids,” he says. One series of paintings features his oldest granddaughter, frolicking in the surf with her little hands often clutching at a little sundress to keep it out of the water. There is a sort of timeless Rockwellian idyll in these works, a celebration of simple scenes ingrained with sentimental, compassionate truth of the moment. “I always say that having empathy for what you are painting gives you a better understanding of your subject.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN
During the pandemic, Farnsworth had to cancel most of the trips he booked to plein air festivals around the U.S,—many of them invite-only—though he did get a chance to do En Plein Air Texas this past October, an event where he’s previously won awards. “Last year was really cool, they had us in a huge stable that had been converted and we all wore masks and were spread apart,” he says. But he has mostly kept busy staying close to home. “I’m close to the beach, and my daughters and grandkids all live close by,” he says, “so I never have to go far to find something worth painting. To be perfectly honest, in spite of all the turmoil of the last year, I can’t think of a better life.” SRQ
