The Passion of an Artist

Painting Teacher Bill Teeple Inspires His
Students to Ignite Their Artistic Spark

by Linda Egenes

There are some dreams that wait for half a lifetime to surface, hidden away in a long-forgotten treasure box along with remnants of rock collections, scraps of velvet dress-up clothes and notes written in top-secret code.

Learning to paint was one of those dreams for me. So when one of my friends completed an impressive painting after just a few months of instruction, I decided to sign on for some lessons at Bill Teeple Studio, where, I found out, Bill Teeple really can take you to that magical place called art.

On a typical Tuesday night six students work quietly over their easels and artist's desks, all facing east. It's the kind of spacious, high-ceilinged place that looks bright and cheerful even at night. Bill sits down to talk to me about what I want to do. He exudes wisdom and compassion, and there's a twinkly quality to his smile that has to do with humor and joy. I find the courage to say I'd like to learn to paint in oils.

He starts me drawing that first evening, and shows me which pencils to use, soft or hard, and exactly how to handle them. "I want you to gradually 'grow' the dark areas," he says as he demonstrates. It's easy to follow his instructions.

"This is really pretty," he says, after I've been drawing for a while. "You could keep going, but you could also stop here." It's by far the best drawing I've ever done in my life. I'm excited.

"Wait until you start painting," he says. "Painting's all about feeling." He says that in a traditional art school, a student couldn't start painting until they'd done two years of drawing first. "But I let the student go to the area of most charm."

This is a hallmark of Bill's teaching, I find.

"Bill doesn't have his own agenda other than to bring out the student's individual talent," says Stacy Hurlin, a painter. "And that's more supportive than anything I've ever known before."

So for the teenage girls, Bill lets them draw from fashion models, and they learn all the fundamentals of figure drawing. For the boys, it's often Japanese anime. For adults it's whatever type of art they're attracted to, or that draws on their particular strengths. He has 60 students of all different ages and levels of experience, and the studio walls are covered with student art. I'm impressed by the skill and depth of expression.

I ask Bill about a tall, skinny canvas with bold geometric figures painted on black. "That's by Tony de Freitas, one of my young students," he says. ""He went through the usual lessons, but I wanted to know where his passion was and one day his eyes lit up and he said, 'Abstract!' And this stuff just keeps pouring out of him."

Another pair of paintings on the wall attract me with their luminous light, reminding me of Vermeer.

"Those are Janet Higgins' says Bill. "She came in about a year ago and I started her painting. Then I had a feeling that Norman Lundin's style was perfect for her. She got it immediately, that painting still life is about looking at objects in consciousness until you basically fall in love with them. You get into the mystery of xistence when you do still life."

Janet says of the experience, "I felt a flow of wonder. Bill inspired me to look, to see and to look again. In looking, everything flowed, and whatever form this flow took was always beautiful and whole and joyful. The joy of creative expression is the essence of Bill's teaching."

I'm only a beginner, but I already feel the flow of wonder. Right now I'm working on some "little paintings," an exercise Bill designed to help his beginning students learn to mix colors intuitively. It's charming and fun and easy, and I'm in love with the process. I find myself seeing shapes, colors and even my own craft of writing in new ways.

The classes are like taking a bath in art itself. As Bill gives each student individual attention, he might respond to the work with a riff on the creative process, on some aspect of art history, or art and consciousness. All of us listen while we work, and we all laugh together at the jokes. And sometimes we crowd around to see him demonstrate a new technique, or to admire another student's work.

It's a safe place to learn, and we all feel that.

"Bill sees the greatness in everyone," says Fauna White. "He's able to see your best qualities and point to them in case you're not even aware of them. He encourages you to develop the spark of true art he sees."

Fauna had never drawn much before, but after just a few months of lessons with Bill, she submitted a drawing to the Regional Iowa Art Association Show and won a blue ribbon.

While he's happy when his students win awards, Bill says it's all about the process, not the product. He's done a lot of deep thinking about art and consciousness over the past 35 years and has mastered just about every medium. At U.C. Berkeley he studied painting and sculpture, and was most of the way through a master's degree when he quit to become a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. This decision was to change his experience of art forever, and start him on the quest that he's still pursuing today.

At one point, in the mid-70s, he collaborated with his then wife Lynn Durham, and their paintings appeared on cards and calendars throughout the country. "I was famous enough to find out that fame's not what it's all about," says Bill with a laugh. After that, he spent years focusing on the integration of art and life. But he never stopped drawing, and even while moving around kept creating his tiny drawings that illuminate inner celestial worlds.

It's the fact that he's transited the whole range of artistic expression himself, and has been inside the art world and is respected by other serious artists, that he can be such a perfect guide to others. If you get stuck, he not only knows a technique, a tool, a trick that is just right to take you to the next step, but he knows how to make you see the work anew, to see the wholeness which you've momentarily lost a connection to.

"It's rare to find a great artist who's also a great teacher," says student Christine Davies. "And Bill is art personified."

In one class he can help serious artist Sharon Koehlblinger assemble an admissions portfolio for top art schools, and then show an investment manager who's never painted before how to make his first color wheel.

"So you mix yellow and red to make orange," says Bill.

"Really!" says the investment manager.

And Bill is right there with him, experiencing the wonder. "Isn't that amazing?" he says. "I've never gotten over it."

Talking with him about art one morning in his studio, I finally get it. Bill can transform all these people into artists because that's what he's actually seeing in them. To a true wizard, after all, it isn't a magic trick, it's his reality.

"I'm as in awe as anyone else," he says, "to see what this person's artistic gift is. I try to locate the very specific character of the student and strengthen that person's unique vision. And then teach them the language so he or she can actually express it."

Bill says he approaches teaching the same way that he approaches art. For him, the classroom is a canvas, and the students are part of his life's work.

He has visions, dreams, and his vision keeps getting realized in ever-widening circles, first with his classes at Bill Teeple Studio, then with the opening of Gallery 51 East to exhibit the best art in Fairfield. Ultimately, he wants to establish Fairfield as a center for the arts.

"It's often a feeling, why a person comes to art class," he says. "They're drawn to this magic experience because they find it a way to complete themselves and to find wholeness. So I see myself as a facilitator. I want to open people's eyes to the magic and perfection in everything at all times, because that's the reality."

For information on group art classes or private lessons call Bill Teeple Studio at 469-6252.

(Linda Egenes is a freelance writer and author of "Visits with the Amish: Impressions of the Plain Life." She can be reached at legenes@mum.edu.)