Juror Profile: Bill Jameson

Bill Jameson, the juror for the upcoming Anderson Artists Guild Juried Show, has a passion for working large. Several of his oil paintings are 6 feet by 12 feet. His subject matter is often mountain landscapes of the Western Carolinas and the Southern Appalachians. Of special interest, he said, is the “fractured light on running water in mountain creeks.”

A native of Honea Path who grew up in Anderson, Jameson studied at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. After serving in the US Army and a year in Vietnam, he continued with graduate studies and teaching landscape painting and life drawing at the Instituto de Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

His career has included teaching at the Gibbes Museum School of Art in Charleston and Queens College in New York and conducting painting workshops nationally and internationally. Jameson is represented by galleries from the Carolinas to California and is included in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston; The South Carolina State Museum, Columbia; The Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville; and the Burroughs-Chapin Museum of Art, Myrtle Beach. A recent exhibit at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts celebrated his 50th anniversary as a professional artist and 30 years of painting the natural landscape at Jones Gap State Park in Greenville County.

As a juror—something he does often—Jameson looks for color harmony, good value structure (“light/dark, push/pull”), and excellence in the execution of the chosen medium. He also seeks a dynamic composition. “One thing often missing in a work is good composition,” he said. He also looks for mystery in the work. “It’s that elusive factor that makes the artwork leap off the wall. You have to step up closer to look at it."