William Tyler, Untitled (WT 045), Ink on paper, 22 x 30 inches
William Tyler, Untitled (WT 246), 2013, 22 1/4 × 30 inches
William Tyler, Untitled (WT 339), 2007, Ink on paper, 11 ¼ x 15 inches, images courtesy Creative Growth
Tyler in the studio at Creative Growth
Generated through interweaving narratives from the news, historical events, his imagination, and personal memories, William Tyler’s fantastically inventive drawings are abundant with distinctive imagery ranging from the everyday to the magical. Having maintained a creative practice at Creative Growth’s Oakland studio since November of 1977, Tyler has produced an extensive and complex body of work spanning forty years.
Focused and diligent, Tyler typically fills the paper’s surface using only ultra-fine point black sharpie. Occasionally he’ll stop to unfold and study pieces of found paper piled on the desk next to him, which were previously covered in his hand-written text. Working at a thoughtful and steady pace, he usually completes a large-scale drawing over the course of two weeks.
Although his process is intensely detailed, it doesn't read as arduous. Rather, it’s methodical. His rhythmic mark-making creates striking black and white repeating patterns - ordered tufts of grass, small obtuse angles indicating waves, expansive fields of tiny dots, and tight, parallel lines that run orthogonally or at forty-five degrees. The robust visual language Tyler has cultivated over decades is a disciplined one, comprised of limited, yet essential visual ideas. Within this well-established system of rules, however, he is afforded a vehicle for uninhibited expression and subtle variations of meaning.
Carefully crafted and implemented in a way that becomes image-making as poetry, each intentionally chosen element or word has both form and function, information and effect. A familiar presence throughout his work, the articulation of an overcast sky evokes the persistent cloud cover typical of the Bay Area and typifies the simple, measured way Tyler is able to exercise control. His clouds are consistent in shape, but the portion of the billowy form covered with diagonal shading marks varies from drawing to drawing, determining exactly how dark or dreary the sky is.
Consistent mechanisms like these across his oeuvre offer him the ability to turn the dials and control the nuanced, emotive effect of each drawing. The density of the grass or waves impacts richness or clarity, while the placement of the horizon line and scale of the house alter the amount of space devoted to information. Boxes of text, clocks, thermometers, and flags displaying letters, numbers, or mysterious symbols shift the work along a fascinating continuum from image to diagram, defining tone and sense of purpose by how a drawing engages the viewer - from understated landscapes without text to didactic works assigning images specific dates and times, while inundating us with information. In more populated landscapes such as Untitled (WT 045) and Untitled (WT 246) dialogue boxes become flags suspended in mid-air, while those found in interiors transform into framed pictures on the wall.
Tyler’s sense of wonder is transmitted through recurring motifs that capture a preoccupation with storytelling, imagination, and magic: “I draw pictures of me and Richard watching TV. I watch the news all the time. Headline News and Fox News and CNN News. War is going on right now. The war will be over until next time. Other TV shows I watch are I Dream of Jeannie with Barbara Eden and Tony Nelson. All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital. All soaps on TV. TV is make-believe. It’s not real.” (William Tyler, source)
William Tyler, Untitled (WT 030), Ink on paper, 11 x 15 inches
William Tyler, Untitled (WT 247), 2007, Ink on paper, 11 ¼ x 15 inches
Throughout his body of work, the content of Tyler’s drawings is inextricably linked to personal experience, particularly reflecting complex ideas surrounding love and family. Numerous drawings created over many years depict William with his brother Richard - affectionate tributes to significant past events and fond memories. The brothers are always standing side by side, dressed identically, with seraphic crescent moon grins. In Untitled (WT 247), William stands to Richard’s left, distinguishable only by the rims of his glasses. Both brothers wear wide-brimmed black hats and are surrounded by imagery and phrases that frequently appear in Tyler’s drawings - the “magic shop” and “magic show,” a cartoonish wizard’s hat, rabbit inside a magician’s top hat, and star-shaped magic wand. When considering William and Richard’s reportedly troubled relationship, it raises new questions and further complicates the connection of Tyler’s work to the nature of memory and loss.
Born in Cincinnati in 1954, William Tyler is one of Creative Growth’s longest attending studio artists. His notable exhibition history includes Storytellers at LAND in Brooklyn curated by Disparate Minds Co-founders Andreana Donahue and Tim Ortiz, Outside at Karma in Amagansett curated by Matthew Higgs, Indigo Mind at StoreFrontLab in San Francisco, Undercover Genius at the Petaluma Arts Center, Frieze Art Fair in NYC, NADA in Miami, Creative Growth at Rachel Uffner Gallery in NYC, The Feverish Library at Friedrich Petzel, Drawing Now Fair in Paris, and Create at the Berkeley Art Museum, among many others. The forthcoming exhibition TWA Trans Worlds, a transversal dialogue around the work of William Tyler, opens November 8 at Galerie Oblique in Switzerland.
