Click Here to Visit the Bill Puryear Gallery
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"The artist surprises us with the reality of things and helps discover to us the beauty of the commonplace."
Like Constable, Bill knows one area and knows it well. A dedicated regional artist, he has spent his life studying, painting and writing about the history and culture of Middle Tennessee. While he paints other areas, in particular the American Southwest and England, the landscape of the South is his first and last love.
In his landscapes he chooses motifs redolent of the history of the area as well as the remote and often undiscovered creeks and valleys of his native Sumner County, and his floral creations bloom year round. He may also be found in the company of bluegrass musicians, sketching and painting composite groups at play. He feels every place has a spirit, if we look for it and his paintings involve deep research, onsite sketches, thought, and careful planning and execution. Each of his paintings has a story to tell.
He works in both watercolor and oil, but also claims stone as a medium. The National Sculpture Garden, commissioned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was fabricated by his company of Tennessee Pink Marble from quarries he reopened after a 50 year hiatus. Using craftsmen, machinery and a quarry master from Carrerra, Italy, where Michaelangelo found his stone for David and The Pieta, the company succeeded in satisfying the National Gallery's exacting demand for an enduring outdoor monument of Tennessee Marble on the Mall.
Bill has been has been painting for 40 years. His work has been displayed in juried shows at Cheekwood, The Parthenon, Central South, Junior League Showhouse, Cumberland Caper, and St. George's ArtFest, and he was recently selected as a signature member of the Central South Exhibition of the Tennessee art League. His paintings appear in collections owned by First Tennessee Bank, Nashville Memorial Hospital, Re/Max, the City of Gallatin, Sumner County Schools, Sumner Academy, the Memorial Foundation and a number of private collections. His Rites of Passage was a calendar picture for The Tennessee Conservationist and his Greenfield Station was a Sumner County Bicentennial print.
He is a member of the Tennessee Art League, The Chestnut Group, the Tennessee Watercolor Society, ArtSumner, and Southern Light Artists of America.
His serialized history of Sumner County is featured each month on his website at http://www.billpurvear.com, where many of his paintings may also be seen. He is currently at work on an Illustrated History of Bledsoe Creek, Cradle of Tennessee History.
Bill and his wife are avid gardeners and his family operates a landscape nursery and design firm on their farm overlooking the Cumberland River near Gallatin.
