An inspirational writer once suggested a “walk into nature is to witness a thousand miracles.” New Orleans artist Billy Solitario witnesses those “miracles” as he explores and captures on canvas radiant landscapes along the New Orleans riverfront and among the islands just off the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Solitario, who moved to New Orleans in 1994 to study painting with Auseklis Ozols at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, has found grace and beauty on the Mississippi River and among the clouds, sand dunes and savannahs of the region’s coastal marshes and barrier islands. His oil paintings reflect a sense of peace when alone with only his brushes, palette, canvas and the cries of gulls and waves breaking on sandy beaches.
The beauty and siren song of the land, skies and sea have been important forces in his life since childhood days, growing up in Gautier, Mississippi, near Ocean Springs, once home to the famed Mississippi artist Walter Anderson.
From an early age, Solitario has been fascinated with Anderson’s Horn Island, which he could see on the horizon from his childhood bedroom window. While in high school, he often sailed out to the island where he tried to paint in Anderson’s unique style. He soon learned he “couldn’t come anywhere close to Anderson’s abilities.”
Whenever possible, Solitario still visits Horn Island, which he describes as an “amazing natural sanctuary,” to witness and paint what Anderson called “the magic hour,” those transfixing moments before sunset “when all things are related.” And just as Anderson became “one with all things,” Solitario opens his senses to rapidly changing atmospheric moments while painting on location along the island’s beaches or from the Mississippi levees.
“It makes you feel alive,” he says. “When you are in nature, you feel wonder. You’re seeing new things, new shapes in the clouds and new designs in the sand dunes. I find the love of nature to be a very powerful one.”
Although Solitario paints nature-inspired still lifes in his studio, the full power in nature is especially present in his stunning images of roiling and billowing clouds. Growing up on the coast, Solitario witnessed hurricanes and storms that tore through the coastal landscape. They had a profound effect on him, his view of nature and his art.
“I pay homage to nature by respecting it and painting it,” he says. “My clouds are a bit ominous. They are the big cumulus nimbus clouds that create very strong storms, lightning, tornadoes, thunder. It’s not only the beauty of nature but also the danger.”
And that’s what he wants viewers to see in his paintings — “nature as powerful and beautiful, dangerous but also welcoming.”
In a sense, it’s Solitario’s way of witnessing “a thousand miracles.”
