The Artist's I: William Wray: Plotting Life's Light, by Michael Newberry

(Editor's note: The illustrations for this article appear only in the print edition of The New Individualist.)

Many of you will be familiar with what a plot is in literature: the story arc of essential events and character development, rising to a climax and providing resolution at the end. What you might not be familiar with is that representational painters also plot their paintings. But instead of sequencing events and characters, they plot the development of color and light. And just as our minds become bored with repetitious elements in stories, our eyes become bored when they see a painting’s tones and colors repeat. Independent of our consciousness, our eyes are in constant movement, comparing and contrasting lights, darks, and colors.

Several years ago, over a pint in a Scottish pub, Andrea Van Doorn, one of the world’s leading vision scientists, mesmerized me with stories of her research about the nature of our eyes. One particular fact she related to me was that if our eyes are focused on one point of color, without the ability to redirect their focus to another point, we cease to see: Our eyes will simply register a gray void.

The opposite of this is when our eyes can compare and contrast many tones and colors, identifying the differences. This experience is incredibly refreshing to our eyes, especially when they can detect the build-up of contrasting lights and colors, leading towards a climax of brilliant patches.

This is precisely what William Wray’s paintings do.

Wray’s Plotting

Wray is an outstanding artist who has been painting only for the last couple of years. Though he has a fine-arts education, he chose to develop a successful career as an illustrator and commercial artist. He told me that in his early years he thought that “fine artists were full of it and that they were pompous.” So, what has changed over the years? “When I was younger, I was a follower. When I did commercial art, I didn’t have to face a blank canvas alone. It took me time to find who I was, to ground my emotions and gain my confidence. Fine art reveals who I am inside—it is personally satisfying.”

Now Wray is solidifying his career by exhibiting in several fine-art galleries, and he maintains a studio in California. His future plans include the ultimate move—to alternate between California and New York City.

Climax

Crystal Cove was commissioned for a cancer ward, and Wray told me that he wanted “to bring the freshness and soothing beauty of nature to the patients.” Notice the bright, peach lights on the clouds on the horizon, and compare those to the cool grays of the wave crests—and compare those again to the darker gray highlights in the clouds above. Wray has built tone upon tone until he blasted through the atmosphere, creating a climax with the clouds’ brilliant light.

Genre and Suspension of Disbelief

Notice Wray’s breezy, expressionist style of painting in Off to the Side. You can see the slap dash of thick brush strokes in the lime and violet sky and in the green and orange ruts on the side of the road. Wray’s style fits generally into the genre of “plein air” painting, which is painting direct from nature or seeming to do so.

The idea of plein air is to be as faithful as possible to the sun’s position and to work faster than the devil to seize an impression. A desirable quality in this style of painting is to literally see the brush marks and to sense the wild, urgent movements of the artist’s hand.

In a way, once you accept the premise of this plein-air style, and if the artist is consistent, the combination encourages you to “suspend disbelief.” Just as you wouldn’t hold the presence of a time machine against a sci-fi writer, powerful brush strokes stoke the blast that catapults you into the plein-air painter’s universe.

An interesting thing about Wray’s method is that, aside from painting directly from nature, he also creates and edits in his studio, sometimes using photo references. Yet, whether outside or in the studio, he maintains a plein-air style of urgency.

Merging Symbolism and Technique

Gas is a wonderful study in contrast of light and dark, exhibited by the clean, bright gas station and the dark, prominent storage tank in the foreground. It is not a stretch to see these things as symbolic of our happy, safe lifestyle in the United States, contrasted with the horrible events happening in the Middle East.

Mood

A melancholy spirit dampens the mood of Jamestown Baptist Church. Stormy clouds, the teetering cypress, steeple, and telephone poles further the mood of an out-of-date era on the verge of collapse. I asked Wray if this painting reflected his view of religion and he told me, “I have never set foot in a church. I loathe the church, yet I am interested in it at the same time.”

Wray masterfully plays with the mood of color. Notice the stone-cold blues and grays, and the wet-looking greens. When he combines these colors with the fading light hitting the side of the church, the total gives us a chilly effect.

The first time I saw Wray’s paintings, I was haunted by similar moods I experienced in response to Raymond Chandler’s stories. The Corner of Chester and Green conveys the arid, hot, dusty, and lonely atmosphere of the streets of Pasadena and the surrounding areas of Los Angeles, especially when one is traveling on foot. I find it surprising that these light, brilliant colors can convey a kind of bleakness. Do you sense that as well?

Lonely Bus has a similarly solitary mood, but it is a radical contrast in light to the painting above. William told me that he always tries to approach each painting differently—to work with different color choices and different lighting conditions. These two paintings are literally as different as night and day. Again Wray engages our eyes by the ebb and flow of light. Here, the street lamps flicker and dim as they recede, like a drunken bum staggering down a deserted street.

Movement

It is not surprising to find that some of Wray’s subjects are locomotives and trailers. I see them as a reflection of the artist: He is a powerfully built guy, and, like him, they are poised for the long haul. But movement in painting is not only about what the subject is doing; it is also about tracking the light and color through space. In Red Train, notice the gradation of light on the overpass as it shoots out from the top of the train. And notice how the tracks disappear at the other end of the overpass—that violet cube of light seems miles away.

In Trailer, observe the red spot directly under the trailer’s hitch and see how it is brighter than other reds in the painting. You can almost make a game of trying to find two identical hues of red, orange, peach, or rust. These color variances encourage our eyes to bounce all over the painting. A funny thought I have about the bright red spot that accents the trailer’s hitch: It is as if the trailer is sending the message that it is ready for a trip.

Cameo Role

As an aside, you might be surprised that I suggest that inanimate objects in paintings have a will of their own. This comes from the concept that every painting is, in some manner, a self-portrait of the artist. Though it is not to be taken literally, it is one of the wonderful ways to approach looking deeper and finding more meaning in a painting.

Resolution

In Joshua Tree, we can discern that the climactic part is the splash of brilliant blue sky, peppered by the incredibly hot red gashes on the two Joshua trees. But what is the resolution to this painting? Simply, it is when the forms of subjects fit into the fore-, back-, and middle-grounds. For example, the two Joshua trees and the side of the hill combine to naturally fill the painting’s foreground. The hill then slopes back comfortably towards the middle ground, and the purple mountains and golden desert floor are reasonably far-off. Back in the distance, the sky picks up its momentum and swings forward towards us. When all those things are in place, we have a sense of completion; the painting has taken us on a roundtrip journey and come about full circle.

The setting sun in the Wild West does conjure feelings of a happy resolution and the expectation of another dawn. We can imagine that this pair of Joshua trees and the solitary troupers behind them will be here again tomorrow, reaching towards the sky, and always catching the light.

And so will William Wray.