GEODESIC
DOME
STUDIO
2003 — 2012
After a decade of painting his now iconic Watercolors of America's Cup 12 Meter yacht racing from his small studio in their Brooklyn Heights apartment, in 1990, Willard and Lois purchased 150 acres of wooded property just outside of Barryville, NY, an area in the Catskills that had attracted a wave of artists leaving the city. This is where he eventually built his last major studio in 2003... a 30-foot-high geodesic dome.
He finally had the expansive studio space he craved, much like his original Bowery loft, and he began to paint again in large Oils with colliding shapes and colors, creating a new series of masterful, richly textured racing action paintings, reminiscent of his earlier expressionist work.
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Lois loved to grow flowers, creating a beautiful garden in front of their Barryville place, and she commuted up on weekends from Brooklyn to tend it. But as Willard spent more and more time there in his studio, Lois, 16 years younger, continued to work full time in the city, co-founding an agency and a school focused on early intervention for children with autism. Their separate pursuits eventually led to a divorce after 25 years of marriage. However, they remained apart for only three years, deciding they liked each other best, and got back together again for another 15 years. They still lived separately much of that time, but went back and forth frequently between the country and the city to be together, with new understandings about the dynamics of their relationship.
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Willard loved being in the dome, and often talked about looking up at the huge ceiling, at the tree silhouettes, or the orange leaves fallen across the top in the fall, and being transported by the light and shadows playing across the dome's surface—rather like looking through a stained-glass window. He eventually moved into the dome full time, living and painting in the same space, with no real separation between his life and his art.
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Around 2004, artist George Sherman, an old family friend from their days on the Bowery in Manhattan, moved into the mobile home next door to the dome, and helped manage the property, which was especially valuable when Willard was away, staying with Lois in Brooklyn or traveling to the many boat shows he visited annually to sell his paintings and limited-edition prints.
After decades living in the city, and the many weeks each year spent on the road meeting with his fans and art collectors at the boat shows, it was up at his Catskills property where Willard felt truly at home, back again in the woods of his Idaho youth, taking long walks with one of his two Grand Standard Poodles–first a spirited black one named Arf, and years later, a cream one named Woof–and finding the artist's solitude to do what he loved most, paint.
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Willard lived energetically and painted at his beloved Barryville, NY property until 2011, when he moved briefly to the Napa Valley in California to live near his daughter, Gretchen and her family, just a few months before his peaceful passing in 2012, at 85 years old.
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