Bill and a Litho Stone

Bill had seen England, France and parts of Germany while he served in the Army from early in 1943 until December of 1945, spending two years of that time stationed in Europe. After the war, what he felt was missing from his college experience in the States, he went deliberately back to Europe to find. He attended the famous Paris school where so many young Americans had trained, the Académie Julian (1949-50), studying sculpture with Gimond and Yencesse and painting with Cavailles. He next sought art training at the equally well-known Art Students League in New York (from December 1951 to May 1952). After he completed his degrees at Alabama and his intervening residencies in these two art capitals—Paris and New York—he returned to France in the Summer of 1955, to print lithos at the atelier of Edmond and Jacques Désjobert. Walmsley chose to do post-graduate work at the University of Kentucky (Summer 1960), and spent some time at Tamarind Lithography Workshop (Summer 1969), printing again at Curwen Studio in London (Spring 1974), and at the Frans Masereel Center maintained by the Ministry of the Flemish Community in Belgium (1987). A Southern artist, he has always spoken ‘art’ with an international accent.