“William Anzalone: Now & Then” Opens at the Red & White Gallery Sept. 3

William Anzalone: Now & Then, a special showing of new works featuring the artist’s ongoing exploration of the landscape set beside a collection of legacy pastels dating back to the 1970s. The exhibit opening reception is Saturday, September 3, from 4-7 p.m., and the artist will be in attendance.

The works of legendary artist William Anzalone have been shown in Houston galleries for over 60 years, and are now available exclusively at the Red & White Gallery on Fayetteville’s Historic Square,

Anzalone is known for his landscapes, and he is “a master at creating paintings that please and challenge our senses at the same time. Layers upon layers of evocative color, realistic images on the edge of abstraction, and his ability to create spaces that draw the viewer into the image are all hallmarks of his portfolio.” His current work is larger in scale, and full of textured layers that draw the viewer deeper and deeper into the work. Anzalone was trained as an architect at MIT and taught 3-D design while a full professor at the University of Houston. This background helps explain his fascination with the spatial relationships in his paintings. What may begin as realistic vignettes around his Round Top home become nearly abstract explorations. Many of the pieces come from his “Louise’s Legacy” series based on images from his late wife’s gated garden.

The images can be viewed online but their real impact is felt in person. Linda Stall captured this insight when she interviewed Anzalone for his first exhibit at the Red & White Gallery in 2013. “… Anzalone wants you to see more. He wants to draw you in. He says ‘most people look at landscapes and say ‘that’s pretty’ and move onto the next.’ He wants to ‘extend the time that a person spends with the painting,’ he wants the viewer ‘stuck in the painting.’”

Possibly the most collected artist in the Houston area, Anzalone has his fans in other major cultural centers as well. He built his reputation on his earlier works consisting of figurative paintings and drawings as well as iconic landscapes.

While teaching figurative drawing at U of H, he was establishing his career as an artist showing his work at Meredith Long & Company, one of Houston’s premiere galleries. The exhibit at the Red & White has a number of smaller pieces from this period consisting of pastel and pencil drawings of the figure, alone or set in muted backgrounds. These very expressive pieces show off Anzalone’s skill as a draftsman and lead into his studies of the barns, gardens, and fields around him once he moved to Round Top. The exhibit at the Red & White contains pieces created as early as the 1970s and 1980s.

In a 1982 Southwest Art feature story about Anzalone’s figure work, the writer stated, “Although his figures and their environment are clearly realistic, they are not highly detailed. The figures are well-rounded and the rooms have depth, but the walls and bulky pieces of furniture are plain and tend to be more important for their color and position than for their detail. Even though Anzalone works consciously to have his figures frozen but not posed — as though caught not in motion, but at the moment before motion begins — the result is less suggestive of a photograph than of memory.”

William Anzalone: Now & Then will be on view at the Red & White Gallery until September 24th and online at www.RedAndWhiteGalleryOnline. com.