Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly October 2008 Artist in Residence: Billy McClain

When the image of thick black circles came into artist Billy McClain’s mind, he went with it. So what if those circles would rain down upon his painting of “fantasy plants” that featured bright green stalks and pink petals sashaying like tutus in the wind. So be it if these impenetrable dots added seriousness to the delightful landscape. A little darkness within the floral beauty seemed fitting, after all, for a work entitled “Global Warming.”

“I usually stay away from political, social issue work,” says McClain, an avid and inspired gardener. “But all you hear about is global warming and drought. This painting is an image of what’s happening to all we’re messing with.”

Despite that serious theme, McClain’s irrepressible sense of beauty and love of the natural world dominate the canvas. These immutable forces are the reason, no doubt, that even the black dots float like fairy dust across the canvas.

“I want to make things pretty and beautiful,” he says. “I want my work to reflect a happiness.”

That esthetic certainly permeates McClain’s studio in Lewisville, a large space full of light and art and possibility. There are bundles of color pencils, canvases, paints, a printing press, and every kind, size, and thickness of paper imaginable. McClain, who teaches art at High Point University, has been exhibiting his prints and paintings since 1978. His work is held in several collections.

For the past six years, McClain has poured himself into bookmaking. “I have always been interested in books as receptacles for ideas,” he says, opening one of his handmade journals reverently. “A book has the power to change you.”

Neatly arranged on one of the many drafting tables is a sampling of his exquisitely crafted books. Each book is made one at a time, from the binding to the hand printed end papers; they all contain key elements found throughout McClain’s expansive body of work: a keen sense of color, a fascination with pattern, and a formalist’s embrace of shape. 

“Handmade books are objects of amazing beauty,” he says, explaining that “it’s very precise work.”

It’s also small-scale work done in discrete stages that held a practical appeal for McClain, who dug into bookmaking after suffering his first reoccurrence of cancer. Since then, illness and art have been inextricably tied together for McClain in ways that are both healing and mysterious.

Consider, for example, the pencil and oil pastel drawing he made six months prior to his diagnosis. Long, sinewy “dark and creepy DNA like” spirals weave top to bottom along the blackish blue background. They feature McClain’s intricate “mark-making,” close up perspective, and flattened surface. As he drew, little red “buds that looked like a flower” began attaching to the spirals.

“Then I was diagnosed and I was like, oh, that’s a little spooky,” he says, explaining that those red buds reflected malignancy.

This isn’t to say McClain deliberately makes art about his illness. In fact, just the opposite is true. After recovering from a difficult operation, McClain created a large drawing of his damaged body and then decided, no, this is not where he wanted to go.

“Everybody suffers,” says McClain, a longtime yoga practitioner and instructor. “I don’t need to show them what pain looks like. They know what it looks like.”

McClain quickly recommitted to creating work centered on the idea of “delighting in the world,” which is where his artistic journey began as a young child drawing and making and engaging with the natural world. “Right now,” he says, smiling, “I’m on the cusp of some new work. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I tell myself, ‘Don’t worry about it. Just make something today.

When did you realize you would live a creative life?

As a young child. I was always drawing, coloring, making things, creating a world.

Where do you find your inspiration?

From the world around me, from nature.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

Just start doing something. Pick up material and work with it.

What do you think of failure?

You need faith.  Failure comes with the territory - don’t be afraid.

What quality do you most admire in other artists?

Prolific-ness

Which artists do you most admire?

Matisse, Casper David Friedrich, Mark Rothko.

What would surprise people about you?

I’m shy.  I’m private and shy.