Recent Drawings

All art work is available through Monkdogz Urban Art.
Please contact Bob Hogge or Marina Hadley for prices and details.

Monkdogz Urban Art, Inc.

Tel: 516-655-1000

Gallery Directors:
Bob Hogge
Marina Hadley

Email Bob: bob@monkdogz.com
Email Marina: marina@monkdogz.com

MONKDOGZ WEBSITE: www.monkdogz.com

WCBS-TV PROFILE: http://wcbstv.com/video/?id=102204@wcbs.dayport.com

BAREBRUSH WEBSITE: http://www.barebrush.com/Artists/ALB109e.html

GALLERY&STUDIO
Volume 12, No. 1
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009

ART ONLINE

William Thierfelder: New Age Renaissance Man

The late graphic master Saul Steinberg once stated that he felt more like a writer than a visual artist, since he was most comfortable drawing on the scale of his handwriting. And William Thierfelder, an artist and a recently retired Professor of English at Dowling College, in Oakdale, N.Y., whose work can be seen on his website (http://www.thierfelderwilliams.com), would probably concur. For like Steinberg, Thierfelder prefers drawing to painting.
“I craft drawings,” he says. “This is a conscious choice, as is the size of my work: Few are larger than 20 x 30 inches; many are smaller My authentic self as an artist is a poet at heart; I speak best in smaller, succinct, compressed forms on basic paper with basic tools ilk pencils, crayons, and colored ink pens. I am creating for the eye that wants to examine a cross section or explore a visua poem, even if that route puts me against popular trends.”

In fact, in the tradition of William Blake, Thierfelder is a double threat, being a writer as well as a visual artist. He publishes poetry and short stories under the pseudonym T. Richard Williams, and that some of his writings make their way online makes his website more interesting in a literary sense than most. Especially poignant are his reminiscences about growing up in Flushing, Queens, written in the third person, presumably to gain a bit of distance from the pain: “While he was a high school junior in Hollis, some seniors pummeled him over the hood of a car for being gay. Looking up at the school building, he could see the principal, who was an Episcopal priest, and the principal’s secretary watching through the windows, doing nothing.”

It took many years, but Thierfelder finally learned to redeem that early pain through art, choosing photography, along with drawing, as “another way to experience the world around me.” Often, he focuses in close-up on everyday objects, such as a pair of eyeglasses, old sneakers, or even a mound of raw potatoes, in a manner that makes one aware, perhaps for the first time, of their abstract beauty and recall the advice of the great American vernacular poet William Carlos Williams (he of “red wheelbarrow” fame): “Not in ideas, but in things.”

Thierfelder also uses photography to celebrate his gay identity, not only with a picture of a man walking casually under a rainbow-flag umbrella that would probably have delighted the martyred activist Harvey Milk, had he lived to see it, but also with unabashedly erotic photographs of the male nude.

The latter is not as simple a subject to do justice to as it might seem, since in a photograph the flaccid penis can appear almost comical, like a little hand puppet peeking out of its pubic bush. But in “Narcissus,” a picture of a muscular youth peering into a mirror, as well as other, even more explicit nudes, Thiefelder employs light and shadow sculpturally, to lend the living body an eternal quality harking back to the immortal marble figures of the ancient Greeks. More of his erotic photography can be seen on “Barebrush Art Log, dedicated to the Art of the Nude (http://www.barebrush.com/Featured/WilliamThierfelder.html).

However, some of the most spectacular works on his own website are the colorful drawings, some of which also grace the website of Mongdogz Urban Art (http://www.monkdogz.com/chelseagallery/artistart/Thierfelder/artist_thierfelder.htm), where Thierfelder had his memorable solo exhibition a couple of years ago in Chelsea. “I use crayons, pencils, and pens because of their simple immediacy and because they form an autobiographical link straight back to my childhood,” he says. And he is not kidding: He often works with the ordinary Crayola brand crayons that we all used in kindergarten. Only, he achieves them with a luminous finesse that we often associate with the more sophisticated wax-based medium called encaustic, which dates back even further than his childhood—to classical antiquity!

“The majority of my work is a response to specific events, dreams, or emotional states, using a deliberately chosen ‘alphabet’ of shapes, colors, and designs,” he says. “Each drawing is a narrative, a unique piece that tells the viewer something about me as well as the object or event being explored, whether it’s a performer at Carnegie Hall, a song, a piece of classical music, a nightmare or an hour of meditation. Geometric forms, especially circles, rectangles, and triangles, spermatozoic shapes, handwriting strokes, etching marks made with knives, pencils, smudges created with erasers, along with a bold color palette, form my basic language.” Although Thierfelder’s materials and methods might suggest a so-called “outsider,” the innate sophistication of his personal iconography prevents his work from being relegated to that specialized ghetto of contemporary art marketing. Rather, the Byzantine intricacy of his mazelike compositions and the intensity of his colors can be likened to those of the eccentric Austrian painter Fritz Hundertwasser, while his range of subject matter and willingness to experiment with a variety of forms and symbols on an intimate scale is more akin to Paul Klee. Indeed, the sheer diversity and richness of his oeuvre can be seen by comparing the iconic simplicity of a piece such as “In My Dreams, I Free Myself,” with its primitive floating figure, to “And Then in My Freshman Year...”, wherein a plethora of brilliant geometric and organic forms evokes a veritable universe in miniature. Other complementary contrast can be seen in the bejeweled baroqueness of a crayon composition such as “Beethoven Piano Concert Three” and the emblematic boldness of works such as “Study 9” and “Study 10,” in which the artist uses prints of his own male nudes as a starting point for vibrant coloristic excursions, combining photography and drawing in innovative ways.

What makes all of these works especially remarkable is that, for all their diversity, they come across as unmistakable elements of a unified vision. Unlike, a lot of other artists, their creator obviously has no need to impose the self-limitations of a “signature style.” True style, after all is a product of individual character, and William Thierfelder, who along with his artistic ventures is active in numerous LGBT and HIV/AIDS organizations, obviously has character to spare.

Ed McCormack

original photo taken by Kelly Kazemier

"A [drawing] is a series of marks joined together to form an object or work over which our eyes may freely roam."

Pierre Bonnard

And then in my freshman year, a change happened . . .

ABOUT MY WORK:
I have a deep commitment to the art and craft of drawing. This is a conscious choice, as is the size of my work: Few are larger than 20 x 30 inches; many are smaller. My authentic self as an artist is a poet at heart; I speak best in smaller, succinct, compressed forms on basic paper with basic tools like pencils, crayons, and colored ink pens. I am creating for the eye that wants to examine a cross section or explore a visual poem, even if that route puts me against popular trends. I don’t worry about trends; I am more concerned about being honest.

The majority of my work is a response to specific events, dreams, or emotional states using a deliberately chosen "alphabet" of shapes, colors, and designs. Geometric forms--especially circles, rectangles, and triangles--spermatozoic shapes, handwriting strokes, etching marks made with knives and pencils, smudges created with erasers, along with a bold color palette form my basic language. I use crayons, pencils, and pens because of their simple immediacy and because they form an autobiographical link straight back to my childhood. Thus my art and the tools used to make that art are my fingerprint, my retina scan, my DNA signature.

Each drawing is a narrative, a unique piece that tells the viewer something about me as well as the object or event being explored, whether it's a performer at Carnegie Hall, a song, a piece of classical music, a nightmare, or an hour of evening meditation.