Ask area artists to cite peers they especially respect, and a name frequently mentioned is William Stockman.
But since 2000, no one has had a chance to see his paintings and drawings — until now. The 42-year-old Denver artist is featured in a major solo exhibition, which has been extended through Tuesday at the Mizel Arts & Culture Center.
If Stockman’s reappearance was long overdue, the wait was undoubtedly worth it. This body of work of uncommon skill, power and mystery firmly re-establishes him as one of the region’s top artists.
The Summit, N.J., native moved to Colorado in 1985 with his girlfriend, who was attending the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he subsequently enrolled, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1989.
He made his first big splash on the local scene in 1995 with a solo exhibition at the venerable artist cooperative, Pirate. The Denver Art Museum purchased a work — an enviable coup for an emerging artist.
He went on to be featured in other well-received shows at local cooperatives and commercial galleries, but decided to move to Philadelphia in 2000 after disappointment at not achieving the financial success he hoped for.
After less than a year there, Stockman moved again to San Antonio, returning to Denver in 2002. But by then, he had essentially given up making art and did not return to it in earnest until about a year ago, facing a tough readjustment.
“You grope your way through it,” he said. “It’s as if every single one that I make, I’m starting all over again.”
The foundation of this show and indeed his very identity as an artist lies in drawing. He might complete as many as 10 a day, using Conte crayon and thinned acrylic washes. Working spontaneously and intuitively, he sometimes spends as little as 30 minutes on each image.
Using an unorthodox selection process, Stockman culled the nearly 40 11-by-14-inch drawings on display — hung salon style on two walls — from an astonishing stock of about 1,000 he has made in the last year.
In addition to picking 10 of the untitled works himself, he asked three other people to each choose 10 as well — his wife; his best friend, Denver painter Stephen Batura; and Simon Zalkind, the Mizel’s director of exhibitions. (A few had to be removed for space considerations.)
Stockman draws inspiration from an array of sources, sometimes something as mundane as the way someone is standing in a newspaper photo. But often, the imagery emerges seemingly on its own from his unconscious.
“Sometimes I just make a mark, and the mark becomes a hand, and the hand is holding a fish, and it is connected to an arm that’s connected to a woman who is standing by a puddle,” he said.
As might be expected, the results are not detailed or refined in any traditional sense, but they reveal his extraordinary technical facility with a kind of crude virtuosity and presence that is gritty and convincing.
Nearly all of them are figurative, with loose, enigmatic narratives with hints of ritualism and mythology. Resisting attempts at interpretation, the meanings remain elusive, probably even to Stockman.
And, yet, that elusiveness is not as frustrating as one might imagine it to be. Within the existential ambiguity exists a kind of truth about the human condition that registers on a visceral and instinctual level, even if it can’t be fully grasped intellectually.
Examples include a drawing of five floating, disembodied heads, each indistinctly rendered, some blurring into skulls. In another, a vague figure with a trident stands aside a pond, in which four people seem to be drowning, only their heads visible.
The drawings kind of blur into the nine paintings on view, and it is tempting in any many ways to see them as kind of large-scale drawings on canvas, with the same interest in line and mark-making.
If, as Stockman professes, he does not feel as comfortable with painting as drawing, he nonetheless displays a keen proficiency in that medium as well. He acknowledges being influenced by such artists as Philip Guston, Max Beckmann and Francis Bacon, and elements of all three can be seen in his work.
Much more deserves to be written about Stockman’s art. Let’s hope there are many more opportunities to see and consider it now that he is back at work and finding renewed rewards in what he is producing.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Nothing Is Hiding”
Art. Singer Gallery, Mizel Arts & Culture Center, 350 S. Dahlia St. An exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Denver artist William Stockman. Extended through Tuesday. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. today, Monday and Tuesday; 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Closed Saturday. Free. 303-316-6360 or .
