NudeS
1938 — 1995
From the time the young Bill Bond shocked his family, at the tender age of 12, by sculpting a full-sized, nude woman out of sand, during a family vacation on the Oregon coast, he was fascinated by the female form as an art subject—and went on to create many series of drawings and paintings from live models over the course of his career, starting in art school in 1944, then again in the late 1960s to early 70s, and in the 1990s.
A 1998 interviewer in Offshore magazine describes Willard's first encounter with a nude art model. While stationed at a Naval radio school in Chicago in 1944, the eighteen-year-old boldly asked his commander if he could attend classes at the nearby Art Institute of Chicago. "Willard tells of arriving late at his first formal art class and seeing a naked woman posing in the center of the room. The professor made him walk to a seat the furthest from the door. He realized then that he was the only man in a room full of female art students. By the time he got to his chair, Bond recalls, his face was beet red and his ears were burning from the whispering and snickers of the women students, who were greatly enjoying his discomfort. One wonders what the women of the class would say today if they knew the sailor boy, who was still "wet behind the ears" would go on to become a well-known artist. One also wonders if this early class influenced the mature Willard Bond, who freely admits that he regularly paints only two subjects: racing yachts and nude women." — Mickey Clement, The Art of the Sea, Offshore Magazine, May 1998
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