86-year-old Waco native returns home to show Oaxaca-inspired art
Painter William Stewart has shown his works in Germany, Paris, New York City, New Mexico and Oaxaca, Mexico, during a six-decade-long career, but not in his Waco hometown.
That is, until this Thursday, when Art Center Waco opens "Dancing Freely," a solo show of his colorful, emotionally expressive abstracts.
The 86-year-old Stewart is happy to be back, although he's lived in Oaxaca for the last nine years. Most of the 39 oil abstracts in the show were painted over the last two years, although one landscape dates to 1977 and shows a more figurative influence prevalent in his work at that time.
He grew up in Waco in the 1950s, left to study at the University of Texas at Austin, then moved to New York in the 1960s — a similar career trajectory to Waco native and internationally known artist and director Robert Wilson.
Wilson and Stewart were friends as kids, in fact, and renewed their friendship in New York's fertile art scene of the 1960s and '70s. While Wilson was working in theater at the time and Stewart in visual art, they found considerable overlap given the mingling of music, visual art, dance, theater and performance art in New York at the time.
"It was a very free and open period and you could afford to live in New York at that time," he chuckled.
Pursuing his art took him to teaching positions in New York and New Jersey, then Spain and San Francisco before he relocated to Taos, New Mexico, in the 1980s, where he taught painting and drawing at the University of New Mexico. His works hang in permanent collections in New York, New Jersey and New Mexico.
Oaxaca nourished his artistic spirit, and for the last nine years he has spent much of his time at his studio there. "I loved Oaxaca as a place to live, the folk art, the textiles, the spirit of the place," he explained, adding he enjoys the semitropical foliage there, too. "I have a nice garden in Oaxaca."
He continues to paint, primarily in oils, watercolor and acrylics, although he's fond of working in pastel as well. His open, vibrant abstracts still win critical attention. In 2019, Stewart won a $24,000 Pollock-Krasner grant to support his work and the Galería Arte de Oaxaca mounted a show of his work last spring.
Oaxaca, its vegetation and light inspire many of his "Dancing Freely" pieces, although some reference Taos and Spain's Costa Brava. Don't look for specific visual details or references, though.
"It's all about feeling. something inside you," he explained.
Stewart will attend the exhibit's opening at 6 p.m. Thursday. He'll also participate in an "Artist Talk + Paint" event from 6-8 p.m. Nov. 21 and a Family Day from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Nov. 23.
"Dancing Freely"
Art by William Stewar
When, where: Thursday through Dec. 21 at Art Center Waco, 701 S. Eighth St. : 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays. Opening reception, 6 p.m. Thursday.
: Free.
Stay up-to-date on what's happening Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly!
