William Betts’s ten paintings at Peter Miller were made by machine using pixel-high slices he chose from his digital photographs. In most cases he began with images of nature. “I’m attracted to gardens–to the formality of their intersection between man and nature,” he says. Threshold and Bird’s Eye View were made from photos of the same irrigated field in France “taken at different times of day so you have different kinds of light.” Myth of Insight comes from a shot of a Japanese maple in autumn. End of Certainty comes from “this grove of beautiful cherry trees blossoming in the spring in Copenhagen, a wonderful combination of budding green and little pink flowers and eggshell blue sky.” Viewed from different positions, the paintings change: lines visible up close sometimes blend, pointillism style, from afar.
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But the images remained in his computer until 2002, when the company Betts was working for was sold and he returned to Houston to make art. Tackling the problem of translating his extruded images to paint, he designed and built a computer-controlled machine that applies paint with miniature rollers, permitting lines as thin as 1/100th of an inch. Once he had a body of work that satisfied him, he started looking for galleries to represent him. Having worked in sales, he knew that “you have to make cold calls. Some artists say, ‘I can’t deal with rejection.’ But I know it’s a numbers game. Being rejected is positive, because if ten people reject me I’m closer to acceptance.” He approached more than 100 New York galleries over eight months before finding one, and he now has galleries in eight cities.
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