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Evansville artist finds inspiration in wild areas

EVANSVILLE — Think about the dream you have stashed away in the back of your head. The one you resurrect on bad days when you imagine a happier future.

William Lathrop had one.

Now the 49-year-old is living it.

He is sitting in his Evansville studio and explaining that he did not want his art to wait until retirement.

“My father died fairly young,” Lathrop says.

“I wanted to see if this could work.”

Seven years ago, he traded a traditional life for the artist’s life.

Lathrop left his job in the corporate world to stroke oil on canvas.

Now he embraces nature for inspiration.

See the paintings on his wall: You can almost hear water lapping on the sandy shore next to a stately birch. Or feel the mist on your cheeks from a thundering waterfall. Or hear the rush of water at the Little Wolf River.

Lathrop works on location throughout the country.

He just returned from a camping trip to Ontario’s remote Lake Superior Provincial Park, where the natural world offered itself to his imagination.

He plans to return to the northern forests later in September, where he photographs, makes plein-air sketches and takes notes in his journal. Later, he uses all for reference while painting back at the studio.

His ability to see the light and lines of nature won him artist-in-residencies at a national lakeshore and park.

In the fall of 2005, he spent three weeks at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

The best part of his stay was the isolation. He had no access to the Internet. His cell phone did not work. Television was a distant memory.

With each passing day, his senses focused, and he became more connected with the natural world. Lathrop marveled at the miracles around him. He saw how mushrooms catch rainwater; how boulders tumble randomly on Lake Superior’s shore; how white birches stretch skyward with lapped light.

A year later, national park workers invited him to Buffalo National River in the heart of the Arkansas Ozark Mountains. He hiked up to eight miles a day in remote forest where the river rushes turquoise from rugged peaks between towering cliffs.

Both experiences led to a different series of paintings.

Both reawakened his attachment to nature.

He now searches almost exclusively for subject matter in wild or natural places.

Lathrop’s skill has not gone unnoticed.

He recently was invited into a national-touring exhibit of paintings inspired by national parks. His work of two iconic white pines at Pictured Rocks went on display in Kansas, Arizona and Utah with paintings from other artists.

Lathrop is currently the featured artist at a Door County gallery. In early September, he will show his work at Virginia’s Alexandria Festival of the Arts, one of the premier art festivals in the nation. He has won several awards and has had a solo show at Miami’s Coconut Grove Gallery. In addition, his work is part of public and corporate collections throughout the United States.

“I feel blessed that I have had enough success to keep going,” he says.

“But it was tough.”

He lost friends from his old life. He downsized to live modestly when his income dropped. But he never lost track of the value of following his heart.

“Why do what everyone else is doing?” he asks, knowing that it is human nature to cling to the roads we know, sticking like lint to the familiar, when the whole world offers possibility.

Lathrop began painting at the University of Notre Dame in 1977. He continued through a series of occupations, including a stint as a distributor of natural foods. Eventually, he returned to college at the UW-Whitewater, where he studied art history, focusing on abstract expressionism. He later returned to traditional jobs until he could no longer deny that painting was his true calling.

“I don’t expect that I will ever retire now,” he says, scanning the paintings on his studio wall and remembering the intimate places that moved him to put a brush to canvas.

“I love what I do.”

FALL ART TOUR

Evansville painter William Lathrop will be among artists in the Fourth Annual Open Studios Fall Art Tour on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 15-16. The event features 40 artists in seven communities south of Madison. Lathrop’s studio is at 102 E. Main Street in downtown Evansville, which is under construction. He will have new works on hand, including paintings featured in a Door County show.

To contact Lathrop, call (608) 513-7299. Email: bill@wlathrop.com. Web site: www.wlathrop.com