Painting the Wind
Willard Bond 1926-2012, created a new style of modern maritime art, particularly capturing the thrill and action of America's Cup 12 Meter yacht racing. The sailors themselves would tell him “You really paint it the way it is out there.”
Building on his foundation as an Abstract Expressionist in the 1950s and 60s, Bond began painting large format watercolors of ships and racing yachts in 1976, in his studio in Brooklyn Heights, NY, combining the classic traditions of painting historically accurate sailing ships with the vitality of his own expressionist, gestural work. In 1990, he created a new studio at his second home in the Catskill Mountains, and continued exploring the dynamic energy of modern sailboat racing in a series of dramatic, large format oils, on canvas and on larger, mahogany panels.
Bond's passion for painting the wind expresses both the joy of sailing and his own sense of the beauty that exists in the universe. These modern paintings launched Bond into an elite band of marine artists, sought by serious collectors throughout the world. The energy of these magnificent racing sailboats, with their crews battling the primal forces of water and wind, comes alive in these images. In this art of the sea, as Bond called his work, he captured the thrill of speed in a fantastic celebration of technique, impressing both avid sailors and veteran visual artists alike.
“His bright, lyrical, energetic paintings are well known to sailors all around the world. Seemingly random areas of bold color come together to create paintings that, through the energized gestures of the strokes themselves, convey the power-packed tension of modern sailing races. ”