Bill Richards: The Process and The Results
Indian Swamp (Cattails), 1976. Graphite on paper. Sheet 23 × 27 inches, image 16 ¾ × 20 ¾ inches.
Bill Richards has made a life of working in graphite on paper. His subject is largely the forested spaces of New York and New England. Richards’ object is a complete composition that extends across the expanse of the page in a way that invites the viewer to interpret the work as abstraction. The drawings reward sustained looking and quiet noticing. There is a kind of invitation into silence that Richards’ work seems to hold out.
I first came across Richards’ graphite images on the small screen of my phone, scrolling through disconnected posts—a welcome image that seemed quietly confident in its form. I found his work at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, noting that though he had studied in Iowa and New Mexico his work seemed to be drawn from the forested landscapes of the Eastern Seaboard. I took this as a subtle note of care in Richards’ work—that he was drawn to the subject of a relatively small area for over 5 decades.
I kept thinking about Richards’ work over a long period of time, looking back at the work on his website and enjoying the digital incarnations of his drawings. Eventually I reached out to Richards and he was kind of enough to agree to a conversation about the long arc of his career and how he found the subject of the first pieces of his oeuvre. What follows is a patient and direct accounting of a lifetime’s work.
Eric Hurtgen
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New Rural (NR): You've been making all-over compositional works using graphite on paper for a long time. How did you come to that way of working and what kept you making work in that vein?
Bill Richards (BR): After graduating with an MFA in drawing (1971), I knew I wanted to dedicate my work to drawing, graphite on paper, and my first instinct was to come to terms with what drawing is. The distinct attributes that separate it from painting. My answer was: It is making marks against a white surface. The white of the paper is the lightest light, and the graphite pencils create the full range of darks. I also knew that my subject would be landscape imagery based on my own observations. I wanted to combine a close observation of nature with the manipulation of natural forms.
The next challenge was to find a specific subject, imagery that I would work on intensely and manipulate.
In about 1974, on a bike ride that passed a swamp near where I lived at the time in Westchester County, I discovered the subject I could use. This area of dense vegetation looked like a real challenge to draw! I went back and took numerous photographs (slides) and then looked at them with a jeweler’s loupe. In those early years I used the entire photographic image as the basis of a drawing. I started to draw from the left and continued to the right. (In later years I would often use just a part of the photograph as the basis of my imagery).
As I started on my first drawing of the swamp, and looked at the source photograph, I immediately realized that I need to ask myself some questions: “Do I want to capture sunlight?” No. “Do I want a sense of the horizon?” No. “Do I want to activate the entire surface evenly?” Yes. The result I wanted was a surface that would be visually active in every square inch, creating what might be viewed as an abstract composition.
Over the years since then, the subject matter has evolved subtly, but the challenges remain and I continue to be excited by the process and the results.
Shadow Brook, 1978. Graphite on paper. Sheet 11 × 15 ⅞ inches, image 18 ⅛ × 22 ⅜ inches.
NR: The all-over composition is one of my favorite aspects of your work—the way the pieces are representational and abstract at the same time. Were there earlier artists, either from the field of abstraction or representation that you felt you were in some kind of conversation with early on?
BR: Before I was involved in overall imagery, that began about the time I joined the the Nancy Hoffman Gallery, I was fascinated by the paintings of Vermeer and Van Eyck. We traveled through Europe seeing their paintings. The overall imagery became a dialogue with Jackson Pollock, De Kooning and Durer prints and others to a lessor extent. I was also interested in Cezanne, buying books about him. Living in New York, I look at every show that includes them. I am also keeping my eye open for anybody doing precise pencil drawings, mainly checking out gallery shows.
NR: You have presumably spent a lot of time in dense vegetation and forests to this point in your practice—has anything shifted or changed in how you approach those areas over the years? And do you have areas of dense vegetation in New York that you return to or are you venturing back out past the suburbs to find source material?
BR: Things have changed over time. My original subject was based on a swampy area near our home in Ossining. I would ride my bike or drive our car to Teatown Reservation with camera and tripod and take slides. These slides were the basis for the drawings. I would view the slides with a jeweler’s loupe and draw from memory.
When we moved to Hastings-on-Hudson I still drove back to Teatown. I also took walks in the neighborhood adding more photos to use.
When we moved to Manhattan in 1983, trips to Teatown were less frequent and I began to search my stack of slides to combine vegetation from various slides. Since then, while I always look forward to spending time in nature, almost all my drawings have been based on those slides I took in Teatown before we moved here.
Another switch was when slides became obsolete. Cellphones became the new camera. This is where I am now. At one time I had prints made from scans of slides, but when we got rid of our printer, I now view a digital photo on my iPad. When necessary, I still look at slides in my collection with a jeweler’s loupe and use them as the basis of drawings. When I look at my drawings, I can tell you what sources, in general terms, I used.
Some of my small drawings and Hedge, a large drawing I completed in 2024, are based on photos I took in Central Park. While some of the photos I take during our travels depict vegetation, I have rarely used those for my drawings. I guess I want New York vegetation!
Hudson River Park 9, 2009. Graphite on paper. Sheet 16 ½ × 19 ¾ inches, image 7 ¼ × 11 inches.
NR: You said earlier that you were still excited by the process and the results of your work. I'm wondering if your relationship to the work has changed during your career at all in order for that to be true? To ask it another way—are you excited about the same things in the work now that excited you on that bike ride in Westchester County in 1974?
BR: Yes, I am still excited, but there is an important difference. I now react not only to the complexity and difficulty of the subject before me, as I did in the first drawing, but I also look at my past works. It is best when older works are in the studio, but if not, I look at photographs of the works. I may decide to do a variation on a previous drawing, or do a variation of a section of an earlier drawing (or a section of the source photograph). The last thing I want to do is repeat myself.
NR: Another of the aspects of the work that I really enjoy is that your work rewards close looking. I have a sense that the complexity of the drawings invites the viewer to come closer, to look for a longer period of time. Is this a conscious aspect of the work—are you hoping to create a space for slow observation?
BR: I have always enjoyed work that draws me in and complexity does this. However, I am not consciously thinking about how I can make a drawing that will ensure such slow observation. I am hoping for a profound response to the drawing, yes, but how this is achieved is up to the viewer. Essentially, I want to enjoy looking at the work myself, and hope this carries over to viewers.
Hidden Valley, 1986. Graphite on paper. Sheet 15 ⅝ × 18 ⅞ inches, image 9 × 12 ¾ inches.
NR: Are there any artists whose work that you've been looking at that you've been having your own profound responses to?
BR: (These are the) artists whose work I go out of my way to see. I love these artists and, indeed, their work has a profound effect on me: Raphael drawings, Michelangelo drawings, Durer prints,Vermeer, Van Eyck, Giovanni, Bellini, Caravaggio, Holbein, Fra Angelico, Ingres, Seurat, Degas, Odilon Redon
NR: Wonderful. And what's next for your own work, looking forward?
BR: After finishing the current drawing, I will be searching new ideas, images to work from, and probably try a smaller size. I seek relaxation after a major effort. I have done this before, quite frequently.
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Find more of Bill Richard’s work at billrichards.nyc
Fallen Tree, 2020. Graphite on paper. Sheet 19 × 25 inches, image 11 ½ × 17 inches.