Bill Ross
Sick with Excitement
August 31 - September 28, 2019
River House Arts is pleased to present Sick with Excitement: Sketches into Paintings 1989 – 2019, a new series of works from Bill Ross. An artist, social worker, and co-founder of Thundersky Gallery in Cincinnati, Ross’s work is widely recognized for its fantastical use of color, creatures, and camp .
In this new series Ross revisits a 30-yr old sketchbook dating from a pivotal post-art school point when his “doodles and abstractions” started to transform into “cartoonish strangeness. “ Some of the paintings are direct recreations of the sketches, some are amalgamations of various drawings, still others are brand new. All are rooted in a sense of re-discovery and re-visioning an earlier life.
Sick with Excitement" is a phrase I’ve used to describe to friends how I felt as a kid when there was anything to look forward to, like going to the fair, or a friend’s house to stay all night, or anywhere that was relatively clean and safe and hopeful, with food and no one to be afraid of. … These paintings, although a little creepy in their candy-colored grimness, are a way for me to create spaces that are relatively clean and safe and even hopeful - my way of taking what was in the past and reinvigorating it with what I know and can do now.
Bill Ross s a graduate of the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, and has exhibited his work in Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Columbus, Ohio.

Champagne Vinaigrette, Acrylic on canvas, 2019