Santelli’s inner visions
Flash Instant, acrylic on canvas on aluminum panel
When Bill Santelli was seven years old, in 1960, he discovered Jackson Pollock in Life magazine, and it changed his life. He walked up to his mother and said, “I’m going to France to become an artist.” On his way to France, he didn’t make it past his mother, nor did he get there to study art when he was older, though he flew to Paris during his honeymoon with his wife partly on a mission to see Pollock’s The Deep at the Pompidou Center. When he came of age, he went to live and work in L.A.
During his talk for his new solo exhibition’s opening at SUNY/Finger Lakes Community College, he said, “Along the way, it was necessary to earn money to keep painting, and so began shadow-careers in education and arts-related businesses. I forged an independent lifestyle that way. I’ve held positions as a high school art teacher; archival picture framer; manager of the largest antique print gallery on the west coast in LA; sales person and book buyer for an art supply company.” Eventually, in 1991, he was able to make a living as a painter without any side hustles partly by learning to market his work himself in an era when it was easier to work with agents to promote work. “In art, survival is success.”
He’s done far more than survive. As Barron Naegel, the gallery’s director, pointed out in his introduction to Santelli’s talk, he has combined his MORE