Bill Curran – “If Not Now, When?…”

August 30 - September 27, 2020.

When the Covid-19 pandemic temporarily closed the Hoboken Historical Museum, Bill Curran’s job as Museum Associate went virtual. He suddenly found himself at home with more time to paint, yet, ironically, deprived of the inspiration he usually finds along his daily walks through Hoboken: flower pots on stoops and window sills, sailboats on the Hudson, and city parks.

At first, without all the errands and appointments that normally organize and fill his days, he wasn’t sure what to do, and he wasn’t painting for a while. Another artist friend suggested, “Just paint what you feel, when you feel it.”

So Bill moved a large easel closer to his window that overlooks the raised flower beds behind Hoboken City Hall. Then he laid out his paints and brushes on the table, so that whenever he feels inspired, he can simply pick up his tools and make art. A flower that had fallen on the table was all it took to rekindle his muse. He said to himself, “I am an artist and I better get to work.”

In the first few weeks of working from home, after he finished his Museum tasks — and sometimes early in the morning as well — he would give in to the urge to capture the beauty he sees everywhere: a bright yellow forsythia bush outside his window, the fiery orange glow of a window across the back yard, the pale moon glowing against a lavender pink sky, a neighbor’s cat or a bunch of cut flowers. 

During the pandemic, Bill has been more productive than ever, turning out more than 75 new paintings since March. Fortunately, right before the pandemic hit, he had just acquired a large supply of canvases, ranging in size from 4” x 6” to 11” x 14”. The smaller canvases allow him to work quickly, while in the throes of whatever inspires him. Bill likes to complete paintings in one session when he can. 

Bill tends to paint spontaneously, just dabbing a canvas with paint, instead of sketching out a scene in advance. He described his process in a recent YouTube conversation with Museum Director Bob Foster: “It’s good not to plan. Just show up with your paints.” When he begins, he says, “I take a thick, juicy brush, and I kind of do an outline, and start filling in the foundation.” Then he adds detail as he goes along, sometimes recalculating the composition if something isn’t right, like a dark flower pot against a dark background. “Something in the blue of the flowers spoke to me,” so he reworked the pot with blue hues.

Once he began venturing out again after the stay-at-home orders were eased, Bill saw a new vibrancy in the colors of late spring, from the tiny morning glory blossoms springing up spontaneously alongside the old Neumann Leathers factory to the carefully arranged planters on nearby stoops and window sills. 

Bill becomes animated when he starts talking about colors, and his paintings reflect that passion. His style is impressionistic, filled with saturated colors and natural light, nearly verging on the abstract in the way colors and shapes fill the canvas. Like the painters he admires most, Fairfield Porter and Wolf Kahn, Bill tends to paint everyday scenes, saying, “I see beauty in the mundane, but by expressing it through painting, I’m saying that what’s here on earth matters.” 

Once a scene catches his fancy, he will return with his paints and a canvas or board, set up a chair across from it with a towel on his lap and just start painting, with the canvas propped up on his knees. “Sometimes, it’s good to just pack up your paints, get out the door and see what speaks to you.”

Though he’s been making art his whole life, Bill can find it difficult to talk about his work. A short film made a few years ago by his friend David Gross and posted on Bill’s website, conveys his ambiguity: “Am I a real artist?…Hello-o-o, I’ve been doing this for 56 years. I’m some kind of artist…” he says. As a teacher of painting classes at the Museum and elsewhere, Bill’s advice to all would-be artists is simple: “Paint what you love. Do it now. Just enjoy the process.” 

Before he joined the Museum staff, Bill was a graphic designer and illustrator for Lord & Taylor. He has enjoyed several exhibitions of his work in the Museum’s Upper Gallery space, Little City Books, Field Colony and in the Hoboken Artists Studio Tour. See more of his work at www.billcurran.net.

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.