William Tucker

Bio:

Studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.F.A. program at Northern Illinois University under traditional Midwestern printmaker David Driesbach during the 1960s gave William C. Tucker training in close observation of nature and the figure. A decade of college teaching followed, during which he was a founding member of a cooperative in Manhattan’s then-emerging SOHO district where he held four solo shows in the 1970s.

 

In later years Tucker has concentrated on printmaking and has exhibited his prints widely in the United States and abroad, including a 2018 solo show of monotypes at the Manhattan Graphics Center. His work can be found in a number of prestigious public collections, including the Library of Congress, the New York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Center. 

His current work can be found at www.wctucker.com

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Artist Statement:

I began working at the Manhattan Graphics Center in the late 1990s, taking courses and working independently there over the next few decades. Though trained as a painter, printmaking for me increasingly became a primary means of artistic expression, as it is today. 

 

By the time covid became a dominant force in our lives I had been working for several years on a series of painterly monotypes at the Graphics Center under the keen and supportive eye of printmaker-instructor Vijay Kumar. My focus in these works was in using symbolic colors and suggestive forms for emotional and expressionistic impact, while working in a structured and predominantly abstract way. A number of later works from that series are included in this show.

 

With the advent of covid in the spring of 2020 and the temporary closure of the Graphics Center, I was forced back upon my own studio resources. Woodcarving, which didn't require a press, proved to be good medicine for the lethargy and loneliness I think many of us were feeling at the time, and I followed up by taking two excellent on-line Graphics Center courses in woodcut and linocut printmaking. Several woodcuts from this period which grew out of my experience with monotype are included in the exhibit. In the fall of  2021, I returned to working at the Graphics Center and one recent intaglio print pulled there inspired by Native American sources, stressing the interdependence of humankind and all nature, is also included.