BILL SAWYER ( NASHVILLE, TN 1936-2020)

Tempera on Masonite. 18”x 24”. Frame: 21"x 26 3/4". Title: Clarksville, Tenn. " I'm the only one of us children who stayed. " Title 2: Clarksville, Tennessee- Someday I might leave this place..."

Bill Sawyer was a self taught Nashville artist who started painting when stationed in France. His first exhibition was in Nashville in May of 1959 and he went on to have one-man shows at Daniel Orr’s Gallery in San Diego, the Little Gallery in Memphis, TN, and the Parthenon in Nashville. Joseph Patterson, then the president of the American Association of Museums, arranged for a show of Sawyer’s work at the Durlacher Brothers Gallery in New York in 1964. Sawyer was the first untrained artist to have a one-man show at the gallery, and his second show there, in 1966.