We’ve lost the knack of looking at prints – whose ascendancy, as an art form, peaked well before the 20th-century. Printmakers not only did well, they specialized – though just as many didn’t. Most people know of Rembrandt as a painter only. Whistler too. It could be argued that neither would have painted as much as they did if it weren’t for a marketplace that preferred it.

However, there are still dogged practictioners and Bill is very much of that tribe. Yet how many other artists delve so deeply into the black holes of our history? Edward Burtynski’s photographs might serve as templates for a more modern sensibility. They are oversized in format, if not ambition. They attempt to show a civilization that is tragically dependent on resources that are obsolete and dwindling. Bill’s concern is strictly psychological. He deals with footprints on paths that are overgrown, with ghosts, and with present-day tombstones that were built for the living. The paradox is that his images are so alive, however sombre they are in feeling. Only Edward Hopper was able to intensify the experience of isolation with quite as much grandeur. You look at Bill’s etchings and it never occurs to you that they might fit easily on a wall, or rest in the palm of your hand, unframed. They are not only timeless, but somehow space-enlarging. Plein air painting wishes to represent optical light and space. Bill can do this with etched lines that are woven together to form implacable mysteries. Charles Meryon had similar ideas and gave us a Paris that was hardly the City of Light tourists flock to see. Bill takes a crumbling wall, a tidal incident, a leftover container and shows us an America that unseats the notion of permanent growth. In his work, things fall apart. Yet the images he has created out of our culture’s leavings are strangely hopeful. While mortar is being washed away, something has taken root in the wall. And it’s reaching out toward the sun.

-Brett Busang