William Stockman digests the world of imagery around him. Drawing from pictorial content sifted from mass media as well as his own experiences, he strips away the specificity of a particular narrative in favor of archetyp e, allegory and the ineffability of gesture. Processing through the hand in real-time as he reads through the newspaper, Stockman often inserts his own iconographies to these impersonal images. This daily ritual results in haunting barebones charcoal drawings depicting both personal and universal reworking's of external events. Athletes, politicians, disaster victims and celebrities alike find themselves born again in an equalized world of stark vulnerability. Recast as hard edged apparitions, these ghostly beings wander through a purgatory of nonspace filled with mysteriously familiar symbols.
From these initial sketches Stockman often zooms in on instances that reveal particular psychic poignancy. Stretching and distorting these fragments in his larger compositions, as the content of these distorted images reduces, they gain in size expanding into nothingness. Released from the specificity of their initial content these works build upon the materiality of paint while remaining anchored in direct mark-making through continued use of charcoal as well as the addition of pastels. As Stockman reconstructs his subjects into both broad and personal forms, the artist leaves behind a physical record of his search for and creation of meaning in the world.