Bill Ainslie

William “Bill” Ainslie (10 April 1934 – 1989) was a South African artist, teacher, activist, as well as the founder of several art projects. Quotes Here I find there are no unpeopled landscapes, no superficially patterned abstracts, no decorative still-lifes. Your works are concerned with man. And yet there is something missing … Too much of your work shows man only on the outside, not enough gets inside him. Do we all, black and white, fear to see him whole? I am interested personally in the problem of inertia and demoralisation … Both black and white art reflect frustration and defeat. There is no great difference between them. But what factors might set the sap moving again? That’s what interests me. Can you structure a reply to alienation. Without art, politics is corrupted by a false notion of power and becomes brutalised; science and technology are corrupted by false notions of insight and reason becomes sterile, reductive and polluting; industry, technology and commerce become materialistic, self-seeking and exploitative. Religion is corrupted by false notions of the spirit and becomes superstitious, self-righteous and sectional. in a materialistic culture, art will seem useless because it involves the question of meaning. It actually challenges people on the level of what they are alive for. Whether they exist for the sole purpose of perpetuating the existing social, political or economic structures or whether they are alive for the quest for personal meaning within that context and a striving to preserve personal integrity. I started off in painting with certain preoccupations. These preoccupations changed. But one thing that has remained continuous for quite a while has been the attempt to almost slough off a skin of inherited ways of doing things. That which is called derivative … And I think it takes a long time to do good work, and to actually discover where the true sources of one’s expression lie. I know what I have so far rejected. I don’t yet feel that I have got through fully at all to what is really trying to come through. Art is very much a challenge to the taste. It is a challenge to one’s accepted notions of life. It is an opening up of new possibilities, of a new sense of meaning. Today, the artist is not required to subordinate his vision to any prevailing code – whether religious, nationalist, or otherwise – he is free to paint whatever moves him. Today the artist does not inherit his ideas from a single cultural stream as in the past. The modern world confronts him with the art of many cultures, and many different time periods, and artists today are making use of this new, and rich inheritance. This means that, though the artist can be as eclectic as he wishes (e.g. ‘realistic’ or ‘abstract’), there is no room for the sort of provincial tyranny that insists that only art of a certain sort is capable of moving us. This imagery, this manipulation of space, this technique, I have attempted to use to evoke a painting which, for want of better words, is symbolic of a certain mood or state of mind. A mood of waiting, of inactivity, of expectancy, sometimes hopeful and sometimes fearful. This is why most are called Vigil. My last exhibition [in Durban] had a few paintings which indicated a new interest for me: something very different from the big figures. This is the first show of mine devoted to this new vein to be held in Johannesburg. Discovering Douglas Portway’s work was an important experience for me. It led me into making a more careful assessment of what is called ‘abstract expressionism’. I discovered painters like Sugai and Mušič, whom I had never heard of before, and I became fascinated by the possibilities of combining multiple images derived from memory, and working them together to create a mood. Paintings symbolic of a mood, but carrying landscape or natural references coming from this country – that is what this show is mainly about. Ainslie Speaks About Art,n.d External links Category:Activists from South Africa Category:Artists from South Africa Category:1934 births Category:1989 deaths Category:Educators from South Africa