William Staples draws on images from childhood in 1970s and 80s as well as art historical imagery, journeying to libraries and scouring the internet for the pictures, drawing and then painting them with a reductive or sentimentally codified manner, where memories fuse with legacies of cultural imagery. In his work, particularly landscapes, colors—their richness or opacity, fading or cleanliness—lines—their looseness or directionality—and space—its constriction or seemingly infinite depth—all allow the imagination to construct an image from these clues.
