For St. George, Painting is Life
By Brian Burns, staff writer, Walpole Times
No matter what kind of a mood he starts off in, Walpole artist Bill St. George is always happy when he’s painting. “It’s what I was meant to do,” he said. “It’s like dancing.” A former art director and graphic designer for an advertising firm, St. George has spent the last ten years transforming himself into a successful painter and an established gallery owner.
For the last three years he has owned and operated the St. George Gallery at 162 Boylston Street in Boston. While his days are spent in the hustle and bustle of the Back Bay, each night he returns home to the relatively quieter confines of Walpole, where he has lived for the past 36 years.
During a recent interview St. George described Walpole as a “pretty little town” but worried that it was being eaten up by developers. “You need to keep some open spaces,” he said. “It’s good for the eyes. St. George often uses the outdoors as the subject matter for his paintings. He can frequently be spotted painting in some of the most eye pleasing parts of Boston the Back Bay, the Public Garden and the Boston Common. He has also painted extensively in Walpole and on the beaches of Scituate. His work isn’t just limited to landscapes, however.
A prolific painter, his subjects have included everything from horses and swimmers to houses in Europe, the brownstones on Newbury Street and the magnolia blossoms that blanket Commonwealth Avenue in April and May.
But for St. George, painting’s not just about the subject: it’s what happens when the paint hits the canvas. When he paints, he uses bright colors and broad strokes to give his work a vibrant feeling. His tools include brushes, knives and paper towels-anything that will transfer his feelings onto the canvas. And while he finds painting to be soothing and relaxing, it’s a far from passive process.
Years of martial arts training have taught him how to concentrate his energy on the canvas in front of him. He said that his entire body becomes an extension of his brush: feet, legs, arms, torso and hands. While he works he listens to upbeat music that, as he describes it, “gets my juices flowing.”
He works rapidly, too. Most of his pieces are completed within a week. “I paint to a point where I think a painting is finished and then I stop. You can make changes forever, but even then, are you really finished?”
St. George has always painted because he enjoys it, but it wasn’t until the success of his first one-man show in 1991 that he became convinced he could also make a living at it. The show, which was held at a gallery in Wellesley, featured a number of paintings that had been done in Walpole, including some of Plimpton Street.
The street, its historic homes, and the Neponset River that runs underneath it used to be some of St. George’s favorite subject matter. Following the success of that first show, St. George left the advertising business to concentrate on painting and promoting his work. Taking the advice of a friend who worked in real estate, St. George painted a number of brownstones buildings, which proved to be lucrative sellers.
He said that the paintings appealed mostly to transplanted Bostonians who return to visit the city and, feeling nostalgic, want to bring a part of it back home with them. Using those paintings and others that he sold through group displays and one-man shows, St. George had established himself enough by 1995 to move into a studio on Boylston Street in Boston.
His original workspace overlooked Boston Common, so he used to put samples of his work in the window to attract potential customers coming across the park. He has since moved his studio to the back of the building. In 1999, St. George took a major step forward by opening his gallery on Newbury Street.
For artists in Boston, Newbury Street is the place to be. Though it stretches for only a mile between Arlington Street and Massachusetts Avenue, its upscale boutiques and restaurants attract that kind of customers that are willing to invest in a painting.
“The people who buy art shop on Newbury Street,” St. George explained. The Street is home to more than 30 different art galleries. To make his gallery stand out on a street with a lot of different attractions, St. George drew on the skills he learned during his years in advertising.
An ornate sign featuring a hand carved dragon hangs above the front entrance and Christmas lights adorn a smaller sign that beckons customers from the sidewalk. The planter boxes in his front windows are filled with tubes of paint rather than flowers. His paintings fill the gallery’s lighted front windows.
The point of it all is to get as much walk-in traffic as possible, he said. “It’s a numbers game.” And while he works hard to get customers inside his gallery, once they’re in he lets his paintings speak for themselves. “It’s a personal process,” he said. “People have to connect with something.”
He said that connections to his work are usually made through his use of bright colors. “They think: ‘this must be a happy person’” .
Back to top
|
Many of you know that I’ve been doing a painting program on television for 14 years. But what you might not be aware of is that “Impressions” can be seen every Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m. and Wednesday evening at 9:30 p.m. on the Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN/Channel 23 or 15). The program takes place at various locations around the Boston area and elsewhere, and shows me in the process of creating a painting. It’s very instructive, and the subject matter changes constantly. One week it could be a brownstone in the Back Bay, the next week a seascape somewhere along the coast of Maine. My cameraman is Bob Hood. He’s been with me since the beginning, and does a great job of capturing not only my work, but what’s going on around me. The interaction with passerby can sometimes be very entertaining. Please tune in. I think you’ll enjoy it and hopefully become a regular viewer. I’m always surprised when someone comes up to me on the street and says “I know you, you’re the guy who does the painting show… I really like it.”
Now landscapes, seascapes and wild “colorscapes” fill St. George’s days. His plein air painting adventures have taken him to St. Remy to paint the olive garden by the sanitarium where Van Gogh stayed, capture the white Salutian horses of Camargue, and reveal the vivid lavender fields of Provence. But in June he comes home to the rich cultural community of Boston to participate in the Copley Society’s “Fresh Paint” Auction.
