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Exotic, strange, mystical, lush, spiritual, and erotic are some words often used to describe the works of William Fields. Each has a point but each falls short. He says his art is the "culmination of forty years of effort and meditation." Basically a self educated man, Fields' art training was limited to a course at Duke University in medical illustration and advice from an artistic mentor, an artist/architect whom he met while serving in the US Army in France. His art education came from visiting museums and reading and from various forms of meditation. The latter are related to his years of studying numerous spiritual and philosophical traditions. Buddhism, Hermetic Science, Gnostic Christianity and Shiva Tantra are core teachings that are now his focus.
Fields was born and reared in Winston Salem, North Carolina in the same small house where he now resides. He recalls telling his mother when only a small boy that he wanted to be an artist. She encouraged him but sixty years ago there was no art and no opportunity for him there. Still he believes art was a natural thing for him and that he was an artist in a former lifetime. His army tour offered him opportunities for greater exposure to art, as did a year in Switzerland and a couple of years traveling across the States working at odd jobs. Also his spiritual studies broadened his horizons. Rejecting his Southern Baptist upbringing as "racist", he began to study other religions and philosophies, particularly Eastern traditions.
Fields' art and his studies are virtually inseparable. Voluntarily entering a meditative state, he begins to create his beautiful and evocative renderings in pastel and prismacolor often requiring a month's effort to complete. The presentations are complex and intriguing with forms both recognizable and obscure, challenging but rarely jarring, and with colors richly soothing. Fields quite accurately sees his art as a spiritual experience and expression.
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