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Peter Willard Makes Art on His Own Terms in Kennett Square

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Photos by Jim Graham

The Kennett Square painter refuses to conform to expectations about what an artist should be.

Peter Willard doesn’t mind it if you think his methodology is a little unusual, perhaps even a little weird. “I don’t use an easel,” the artist says as he walks around Trover Nine, his small studio and gallery on South Broad Street in Kennett Square.

There are tubes of paint, brushes, and framed and unframed paintings everywhere—and nothing that could be mistaken for an easel. What does he do when he goes out to paint his English-style landscapes? “Oh, I don’t do plein air, and I don’t use photographs,” he says. “Everything is in my head.”

artist and paint brush willard

Willard often smiles when he discusses his more than 20 years of work as a professional painter. He confesses to being somewhat hyperactive. He’s unable, it seems, to remain seated for more than a few minutes before jumping up to retrieve a book or make a point with one of his watercolors. “I just sit at the desk over there and paint whatever comes into my head,” says Willard, grinning. “If it’s a large painting, I get down on the floor.”

artist

Willard is determined to shoot down all the ready-made conceptions you might have about painters, their work habits, selling one’s work … everything. He wants to avoid any expectations of what it means to be a painter before you categorize him and assume he’ll be that way. That openness is part of his self-branding, which may be why the same self-descriptive quotes tend to crop up in every story written about him over the past 20 years. Frankly, it sounds fun to be the kind of artist Willard is.

And just what sort of artist is he? His stock in trade is small watercolors. His impressionistic landscapes are mostly as dark as Andrew Wyeth’s naturalistic palette—moody, painted sketches he says are dashed off “just before I go out the door.” Most have a similar style; some have a similar look.

art gallery

Peter Willard at work (and at rest) in his Trover Nine Studio in Kennett Square.

If you take a photo of one of Willard’s landscapes and upload it to a computer to view without the frame in the right light, you might say, “That painting really looks interesting. I can imagine that being …” But if you think there should be more to it—that fine art should be labored over—then you don’t get Peter Willard.

Willard gets to work around 9:30 or 10 a.m., painting only when the mood strikes him. And even when it does, he’ll often discard what he’s sketching or painting time and again before he finds a keeper.

It’s fair to say that Willard drifted into art. “We were living in Maine when I was a kid, and my father paid for us to have watercolor lessons in the afternoon,” he recalls. “I thought it was a fun thing to do.” Although he always liked to sketch and doodle, Willard took only one art class while at Tower Hill, graduating from Connecticut’s Westminster School in 1977.

Willard paintings

At the University of Delaware, he studied economics and foreign policy, later working as bartender at the Back Burner in Hockessin. Graduating from UD in 1981, Willard spent his pre-painting career in the financial industry—mainly at credit card banks in Delaware, then as an accountant and bookkeeper for a small business.

That’s when he began to paint seriously. His debut exhibition was part of a group show at Greenville’s Station Gallery in 1998. “Later, I took 10 small watercolors—landscapes—to a post-Christmas sale there,” he recalls. “All sold but one.”

If you think there should be more to it—that fine art should be labored over—then you don’t get Peter Willard.

artist drafts

Willard continued to work at a day job until 2010, when he turned 50. “I said, ‘That’s it. I’m out.’”

His wife, Sherry, now a senior director at Barclaycard in Wilmington, encouraged him to go for it. “It’s not exactly a typical retirement job,” he notes.

For a while, Willard had a studio near the Brandywine River Museum of Art, but that got wiped out in one of the creek’s periodic floods. He moved into his current space—a step-up shop with the door at the building’s corner—in 2014. He named it Trover Nine after his early internet handle. Willard was nicknamed “Trover” as a kid.

Willard’s daily grind sounds like something Jimmy Buffet might’ve dreamed up after a few tequilas in Margaritaville. He gets to work around 9:30 or 10 a.m., painting only when the mood strikes him. And even when it does, he’ll often discard what he’s sketching or painting time and again before he finds a keeper. “There’s something I don’t like about each painting—even the ones I keep,” he says.

Willard

Midday, Willard may take time off to play racquetball, tennis or squash. Or he may go for an afternoon ride in the countryside on his Travelo road bike for artistic inspiration. “I didn’t swim when I was a kid—now I love doing it,” he says. “They have a great outdoor pool at Hockessin Athletic Club.”

Though watercolors are his signature, Willard does create some larger impressionistic paintings, generally in bright colors with acrylics as a base and perhaps markers worked in. After seeing a Basquiat exhibit in New York, he was inspired to adapt a red cartoon dog to his acrylics, painting the animal first and the background after. He also likes the process of sgrafitto, literally scratching the surface of a painting with a nail or other instrument for effect. “I put my stuff on Instagram,” he says.

Whatever the style or media, Willard has a process—one that works for him. “We go to Maine, and I’ll just sit there and stare out. Or I love to go to the Barnes and sit and look at the paintings. I get lost in it. But it’s all in there,” he says, tapping his head and flashing a conspiratorial grin.

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