Fine Art Online at Northwest Louisiana Art Gallery, featuring Contemporary Art by Bill Gingles.    All images of the artists work found on this site are Copyright (c) Protected.   For information on how to purchase a work of art, please contact the artist through the "e-mail" link, or contact the gallery at info@nwlaartgallery.com.

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For information on how to purchase a work of art, please contact the artist through the "e-mail" link, or contact the gallery at info@nwlaartgallery.com.

Photo Credit: Shane Bevel/The Times)

Bill Gingles sometimes gets funny looks from passersby.

It's because most people don't understand why he's so fascinated by random bits of wall, tattered billboards and the sides of boxcars, which he often stops to photograph.

Gingles' hunger for urban, time-weathered treasures is apparent in his paintings, some of which use a mixed media technique more closely resembling architectural materials than paint. Using his abstract visual language with the occasional Roman amphora or an object gleaned from a dream, Gingles is interested in unraveling his insides onto canvas.

Gingles got his bachelor of arts degree in fine art from Northwestern State University. The 47-year-old artist, who has exhibited his works nationwide for more than two decades, recently won the 2004 Artist Fellowship award for visual art and is showing some of his latest works at the Bistineau Gallery in Shreveport this weekend, as well as at the Stephen F. Austin State University's Art Center in Nacogdoches through March 24. He teaches upper-level classes at C.E. Byrd High School and holds private lessons in his studio next to his Shreveport home, where he and his wife, Diana, reside.

QUESTION: What draws you to the archaic?

ANSWER: I think people are somehow in love with the poetry of decay. And I don't think that's a bad thing. And the older I get, the more that's becoming pronounced. I would not want to be 25 again. There's something interesting about the effect of time on people and things.

QUESTION: What is the process of your textured works?

ANSWER: After I stretch the canvas I lay it on the floor of the studio. I mix a matte medium and calcium carbonate into like a pancake batter and pour it and trowel it around. And then I embed sand into it, and then it has to sit on the floor for about a day and a half while it partially dries. And then I excavate part of it.

QUESTION: Are you symbolic with your work?

ANSWER: Yeah, I am. But I don't necessarily try to figure it out explicitly before I begin using it. If it seems the thing to do, I do it under the impulses that come from down-below verbal thinking. I think only in that way you can make work that's truly authentic.

QUESTION: What do you mean by "down-below verbal thinking?"

ANSWER: When you're painting who you are inside, you don't have an object to look at. And consequently you have to paint strictly by intuition. And it's not a verbal thinking process. It's not like, OK, now I have to put this color here, and after that I'll put this shape here, because those things don't present themselves in advance. It's like a door presents itself and you walk through it.

QUESTION: When you started working in the abstract, did you feel you had to define a visual language first?

ANSWER: Yes. And it's precisely the development of a personal language that is the most difficult thing in being a painter or an artist of any kind because identity is the No. 1 issue. It's why you're doing it. The quest that an artist goes on from the beginning is, who am I in terms of paint and images, who am I in terms of picture, and how best to express that? We don't come with manuals or illustrations of what our interiors are like and every one of us is different and so it's a matter of going through years of painting and finding who I am and who I'm not.

QUESTION: What colors do you like to work with?

ANSWER: Because I have a natural affinity for textures and colors that seem to be mature, not straight out of the tube, like cadmium red. I like colors that seem to live and have some experience.

QUESTION: What was your first encounter with visual art?

ANSWER: I got out of the car when I was 3, I was walking across the front yard to the door and I was arrested by the sight of melted crayons in the grass. I thought to myself, so that's how they make paint. I was so sure of it that I never sought confirmation from the adults. I now know how to make paint out of crayons.

QUESTION: Any final thoughts?

ANSWER: I'm confident about my work. I know I'm good. That sounds like, 'Wow, he's conceited.' But there's not a whole lot of areas in my life that I'll say that with that much bluntness. But I know who I am in art. I know where I am, I know what I am. And I approach every painting with confidence.