BILL GINGLES
 Married, kids, grand kids, early 50s.
I live in the south by choice. I was born here in Louisiana, left when I was five and returned when I was thirty.
I lived in different parts of the country while growing up and as an adult I spent a decade in Denver. Eventually, I could not resist the urge to come back. Louisiana has a few problems to be sure, but natural beauty is not one of them.
My wife and I bought a beautiful old two-story house built in 1922 surrounded by huge oak and magnolia trees. A building in back has a double garage and an apartment above it. The garage is my studio.
I recently told a friend of mine, only half joking, that I'm not a "local artist": I just happen to live here. Authentic fine art has no real geography in the same way that it doesn't seem subject to the passage of time. In a time of easy travel and the Internet, I think geography is mattering less and less.
In the studio each painting is a starting over, a tacit recognition that after thirty plus years of painting I still don’t know how to make a painting (which is different from knowing how to paint). I just know that I can. Each time the task is to find a way to give myself to the painting so the magic can happen and the painting can stir to life.
Each new painting reveals its own tendencies and surprises as it comes to life. Rather like children from the same parents, they are each at once individuals and siblings. It is because the life they share with each other is the life they drew from me.
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