Bill Chiechi has been creating art for as long as he can remember. Art has always been about the interpretation of things for him.
“If there is a mountain, then you can assume you can see it. But what does it look like to you, and what does it look like to someone else? Maybe some one sees a big hill with dirt, rock and trees on it. So, art is very subjective.”
When Bill was a kid he use to go fishing with his dad up in the mountains. While driving through the canyons he would look up at the jagged cliff walls to see figures in them. He visualizes people and animals, Indians fighting bears with spears, huge skeletons riding motorcycles over a road of bones, or large eagles perched on dead tree limbs. These were some of things that he sees when he looks around nature. At a young age he knew that he wanted to recreate these images by drawing them, and that was an early artistic outlet for him. It all started by simply putting led on paper.
Bill joined the Marine Corps when he was 17 years old. He was stationed in Yuma Arizona for two years where he attended a community college part time. There he took an art class where he met a wonderful professor named Susan Morrison. She inspired him to paint without fear or regret. Bill experimented with different mediums, created what moved him onto the canvas, and to not worry about how his work will turn out because a painting always evolves. The art classes he attended became an escape from his military way of life, and an outlet that he would embrace for ever.
“It is your world. Be brave!” – Bill
Through out his twenties he painted where ever he could. Bill used different mediums such as spray paint, charcoal, pencil, oils, acrylics, pastels and watercolors. At one point, Bill use to make the air show billboards for the Marine base. They were usually paintings of harriers and F-18s flying through the atmosphere with the desert landscape in the background. Much to the higher ups shrug-grin the colors on the planes were not always standard gun-metal gray. He also painted murals on the walls of his dads aging red barn. Bill participated in some school art activities and showed some paintings in small galleries in Arizona, Oregon and California. No matter where he lived, whether in a basement, an apartment or out of a Volkswagen van, there was always a space reserved for his paintings.
One of Bill’s influences was Bob Ross. Bill is awed by the way Bob Ross could just make up different landscapes on the whim, along with his knowledgeable skills and techniques. This was impressive to Bill. Jackson Pollock is another big influence that Bill appreciates. The dripping effect on huge canvases that Pollock would lay out on the floor was so inventive in Bill’s perspective. Bill also believes the use of color by Monet is amazing, and shows that there really is no boundaries when it comes to color. These are just some of the artists that inspire him to become a painter.
Bill’s paintings reflect his life in some way or another. There is passion in his work, and the belief that each one holds truth and substantial clarity. His work will move you in some way or another, or it will at least make your eye wander around visually, and that’s all that really matters to him. To look at his paintings and be moved in some way or form is his goal, and the reason that he continues to paint.