Bill White has been called, “the best realist and portrait painter I`ve worked with during my 32 year career in art galleries,” by Galeria Pacifico owner Gary Thompson. This should be readily evident to everyone who attends the cocktail inaugurations for his recent paintings at Galeria Pacifico during the Wednesday Art Walks on Jan. 26th and Feb. 2nd. This will be White's fourth solo show at the gallery and marks what he calls a new level in his  continuing effort over the years to capture the beauty in the mood of his subjects at that moment, what Bill might  refer to as the calmness and joy of their emotional essence. Sometimes his perception is aided by the fact that his subjects are  friends, but even when not, his intense focus on observing the subtle characteristics that offer a window to a subject’s personality seem to enable him to go far beyond the photographic. He especially likes to show the emotional interrelation between two subjects or their connection with the physical setting.

Although his style has been called photorealism by some, Bill prefers to be called a “colorist,” which along with an emphasis on spatial relationships, are concepts that he learned from his teacher at the Seattle Academy of Realist Painting, Charles Emerson, who himself was the student of the famous painter, Josef Albers. White is a also a talented photographer and he does use his photos as road maps to get to the finished painting, but only after selecting one from the scores to hundreds of shots of the subject that he may have taken, and then adjusting them to his taste on the computer before he prints a photo he will use as a basic guide. An example of this might be the painting from the invitation for his new exhibit, which shows two dancers, Citlali and Yaneth, from PuertoVallarta's renowned Grupo Folklorico de Baile Xiutla. White was given access to the dancers by Enrique Barrios, the founder and director of the group (pronounced “Shoot lah”) , and over the last few years has taken over a thousand photos of the dancers while creating only a handful of paintings based on them.
 
Bill worked next to a dance studio in Seattle and had several friends in that field before coming to Vallarta, and when he saw the Xiutla group perform they became a major inspiration for him to live here. His paintings of these dancers, cowboys, horses, surfers and even female nudes will be featured at Galeria Pacifico`s second floor location at 174 Aldama above the Caballito del Mar Gallery. Bill White will be in attendance at both Wednesday cocktail receptions from 6:00 to 10:00 PM. on January 26th and February 2nd, and the paintings are on display Monday to Saturday, 10 AM – 8 PM.

Source: Galería Pacífico