The Late Bill Harsh Celebrated at Retrospective Exhibition

The Benicia art community has lost one of its own. On October 27, beloved artist and art instructor William Harsh passed away peacefully at home after a 15-month battle with cancer. A truck containing 35 of Harsh's paintings was parked in front of his home on the night he died. The work was scheduled to be delivered to an Oakland gallery the following day.

Known as “Bill”, Harsh was known for his oil paintings, monotype printmaking and drawings. Described as Expressionist, Surrealist and Metaphysical, Harsh’s distinct style used piles of ordinary objects as the subject- things like furniture, empty frames, ladders and crumpled fabric.

“With its roots in Picasso, Chirico, Beckmann and Guston... his art demands and rewards serious looking, and delivers the aesthetic goods without apologies or excuses," explains DeWitt Cheng, art critic and author of Inside Out: Paintings of William Harsh. 

Aside from being an accomplished artist with multiple national exhibitions, Harsh enjoyed a 32-year career as an art instructor, teaching at several schools including Academy of Art San Francisco, University of San Francisco and Boston University, where he received his MFA. 

In Benicia, Harsh was a popular instructor at Arts Benicia’s Education Program -a program he was instrumental in building. Although primarily an oil painter, Harsh introduced countless artists to the mediums of monotype printmaking and encaustic painting.

Harsh’s final exhibition, “Inside Out:  A William Harsh Retrospective” opened at Vessel Gallery in Oakland, just days after his passing. 

A reception at the gallery held November 10, was well attended by fellow artists, friends and fans of Harsh’s work.   Dozens of people from the Benicia art community were on hand to celebrate Harsh’s life and work.

Harsh had planned to do an artist talk at the reception, which Cheng graciously hosted in his absence. During the “Honorary Memory of William Harsh” that followed, Vessell Gallery's owner Lonnie Lee, spoke fondly and emotionally of Harsh. Having been an enthusiastic supporter of Harsh’s work for the past few years, she had become close friends with Harsh and his wife Marilyn Bardet, and worked closely with them for several months in preparing the show. 

The crowd was moved to tears when Bardet read a poem entitled The News, written on the day of Harsh’s passing by close friend Katie Zilavy.  

“Right to the end, he never feared dying, but only lamented and suffered over his inability to continue painting,” Bardet shared with friends in a letter after his passing. “He truly wanted to continue, imagining years ahead of fruitful work, finally seeing and accepting the promise of what he had thus far accomplished.”

It was no surprise that many of Harsh’s paintings sold at the opening. The “Inside Out” exhibition at the Vessel Gallery will be open through December 1st. Cheng’s book can be ordered online. 

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If there’s something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor JB Davis at 707-628-0051 or email him at benicia@patch.com.