Bill is a renaissance man from Arizona. His experience includes photography, illustration, design and fine art. In the 80's, Bill followed trends and transitioned from illustration to publication design. By 2000, he was working as a design director for Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the organization that takes care of all the parks surrounding The Golden Gate Bridge. During that time, Bill also created a collection of sketches called City Streets, which were inspired by the folks he'd see at Café Puccini in North Beach, where he often stopped on his way to work in Fort Mason. Later, he reworked these sketches into paintings.
In his latest works (painted just before Covid-19 pandemic), called Relations, Bill explores topics of family. These paintings show expressive characters from a fractured perspective that reminds of cubist masters. The names of these works include Family Group, Distant Cousin, Family of Four, Uncle and Family Tree. Relations is currently on display here, in Faultline Artspace's gallery space.
As an artist, Bill is not afraid to use trendy combinations of complementary colors like orange and greens and yellow and blues. Also, by using combinations of contrasting colors from the opposite side of the spectrum, Bill's paintings take on a provocative motion. Overall, Bill's style is fluid. His art seems to evolve in unexpected directions. Throughout his career, he has gone from depicting foreign landscapes, to loose geometric abstraction, and then back to expressive figuration. Above all else, Bill is and always has been ahead of his time.
If you love colorful artworks full of energy book an Art Visit with Bill Prochnow.
