Published: March 29, 2008 07:36 pm            

BILL SHARPTON: Building his legacy

There are beautiful paintings all over Wallace State Community College. Walls in every department are adorned with original oil paintings and murals of landscapes, college buildings and staff members, and they are all created by one man, Bill Sharpton.

Sharpton has the unusual distinction of being the official artist in residence at Wallace State.

“I don’t know of any other community college that has an artist in residence,” said Sharpton. “A community college normally can’t afford to pay someone to do what I do. I suppose I am here because I’m cheap. I am fortunate enough not to need much pay because I can live on my retirement. ”

Sharpton is paid minimum wage by the college. He has painted every day since 1998 in the small room in the history building at Wallace State that used to be his classroom. He was a part-time art instructor at the college starting in 1975 and then full-time for ten years between 1978 and 1988. For the next 10 years, he was retired.

At the beginning of his Wallace State career, Sharpton’s art department was a small room situated off what was then the automotive repair shop.

“It was pretty bare bones back in the day,” said Sharpton. “There were cement floors and everything was unfinished. It took a lot of effort to grow the department, but eventually the college put in a darkroom and a ceramics shop as well as a proper place to paint.”

Sharpton was the sole instructor in the art department for ten years. He said he misses those years as an instructor.

“All the work of growing the department was up to me,” he said. “I had a full schedule night and day. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but that was the best time of my life. I got so much personal enjoyment out of teaching; it was like being paid to do a hobby.

“The students always knew I enjoyed it,” he said. “Sometimes the class would go so well, there was an electricity in the air, and I’d go home feeling on a high.”

Sharpton said his former students still send him Christmas cards and he runs into one occasionally at local grocery stores, but it is strange for him to meet students and find that they have aged, too.

“When you’re a teacher, you get older and older but the students you teach year after year are always the same age,” he said. “So it is strange to meet up with one later on and find that they have aged and gone gray, too.”

Sharpton started his painting career while serving in the Navy. He wanted something to do during what little spare time he had, so he bought a couple of brushes and some small tubes of oil paint one day and taught himself how to paint.

There were some hiccups along the way.

“The first canvas I got, I was painting on it and the oils kept sinking in and I couldn’t understand why,” said Sharpton. “Nobody told me they had to be primed first. It was a long time before I found out I was doing it the wrong way.”

Sharpton still has that first painting he ever made. It is kept in his house, though not on display.

“I was so proud of it at the time,” he laughed. “I thought I was hot stuff. But over time, as I got better, it looked worse and worse. That’s the thing about painting. You are always satisfied with what skill level you are on at that particular time. You can never learn all there is to know about it. It isn’t something you can learn from a book. You can get guidance, but you just have to develop your own style by practicing.”

Sharpton gives tips to Wallace State art students all the time, he said, when they come and ask for teaching. Sharpton himself is entirely self-taught, except for a few tips he was given by a Cuban painter when he was stationed in Guantanamo in Cuba.

“This Cuban painter would paint and sell pictures on the base,” he said. “He always signed them Raul of New York. He gave me a few pointers in the beginning, but other than that, I have learned by trial and error with more error than anything else.”

He takes photos of landscapes that strike his attention and then paints from that photo, taking weeks to hone every detail. He has made several portraits, but he enjoys landscapes, especially with water scenes, more.

“The more detail there is, the better for me,” he said. “I look for an image that is highly detailed so I can get lost in painting it. I guess I have an inbuilt mechanism that allows me to meet the challenge of each detail as it comes. The most enjoyable thing to paint and the hardest to pin down is a running stream. If you paint it one way one time, and it works, that may not be right the next time. The challenge is what draws me. When I approach a painting, I have no set program to complete it. I just turn myself loose, and when I finish, I have no idea how I managed it.”

After hundreds of paintings, Sharpton said he is still learning and improving all the time.

He donates all of his art to the college. He said without his current artist in residence situation, he would not be so productive.

“This is the kind of thing that you need appreciation for,” he said. “It is like with musicians. They need to perform in front of other people or it’s just another practice session. I thrive on knowing that people are able to look at my art every day in the college and they are getting enjoyment out of it. That’s what motivates me every day.”

Sharpton gets a lot of requests for commissioned work, but he said he doesn’t have the time to do it.

“I am asked a lot by people,” he said. “But aside from having no time, I like the setup I have a Wallace. Almost everything I have done is accumulated here in one place. It is my hope that one day they can put the best pieces together and make a permanent exhibition. I am working on my legacy here. I hope that the students and staff of Wallace will be looking at my work long after I am gone and out of here.”

Sharpton and his wife, Dorothy Faye, are both Crane Hill natives who currently live in Good Hope. He has three grown children, Betty, Bill Jr. and Carlene.

        

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