Peter Hristoff (PH): Please tell us a bit about your studio routine, your discipline. Is your studio at home? Outside your home? Does that make a difference?

William Patterson (WP): I am in the studio five days a week, 9-5pm. I work on a number of paintings at once. I usually start with an idea of what I want to do, but soon I see something else in the paint, and I switch direction. The paintings flip around, get taken off the wall, find their way back. Paintings get sanded down and worked over, sometimes a dozen of times, until I land on the one I can't do without.

My studio is about a 15 minute walk from my apartment in Gowanus, Brooklyn. That's close enough that I can go on a whim, but far enough that I have to go with intention. I find that a dedicated space is necessary for my work, the way plants grow in a terrarium.

PH: What advice would you give to the "Undergraduate School" you? To the "Graduate School" you?

WP: "Don't be afraid to make things you love!" I think I spent too much time trying to be clever in undergrad. To myself in grad school I'd say, "Stop making such big paintings! Work smaller and make a ton of them. And don't be afraid to knock-off early renaissance paintings. I know you want to!"

PH: What is the most difficult thing about being an artist? The easiest?

WP: The most difficult thing about being an artist is getting rid of work you almost love. The best stuff always lies on the other side of that. It's the ones where I gave up on my great idea, where I was surprised and it shows, that last. The easiest part of being an artist is staying interested in it. The act of painting—facing a canvas with a set of possibilities and trying to work toward something real—never gets old.

PH: What does it mean to be a "full-time artist," and what determines what a "full-time" artist is?

WP: It's a commitment to pursuing your art, to not sweeping it under the rug when it's inconvenient. It's always there, in some form, and whether you have 40 hours a week to dedicate to it or two, there is no hiding from it.

PH: Who are some of your artist heroes and why?

WP: My favorite painters are magicians: Forrest Bess, Ryder, Uccello, Piero, Goya. The way Guston talks about art--his collected writings are the most worthwhile reading on painting I know. Milton Avery, Maria Lassnig, Kathy Bradford, Farrell Brickhouse. All of these artists follow their star with a singular, ludicrous seriousness. And at their best, they make me believe.

PH: Why is painting important? What makes a painting work?

WP: Very rarely painting does something nothing else can. It brings you into its force field in ways difficult to talk about. It seems implausible that anyone other than you could understand it—much less have made it. Painting is important because it holds that possibility open. Paintings work in a million different ways and that's something else entirely. It seems silly to say, but a painting works when it (not the painter) seems to know what it is.

William Patterson's solo exhibition The Magician's Breakfast was curated by Peter Hristoff in October 2022 in The Flatiron Project Space with SVA's BFA Visual & Critical Studies.

Peter Hristoff is a Visual Artist and BFA faculty member at SVA. His classes for Continuing Education include The Vigorous Figure, Inventory Drawing and Drawing Art History at The Met.