at Casola Gallery - Opening March 12
927 South Street, Peekskill, NY. 914-734-2154

This work is a summation of Maxwell’s l5 year development of and preoccupation with “The Perfect Circle” series that includes paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints that speak to humanity’s never ending quest for perfection.  This journey, from the very beginning of civilization to create utopias, philosophical absolutes, universal religions, governmental systems, institutions of education, agricultural solutions, appliances for every purpose, weapons of mass destruction, stylistic apparel, the right paperclip, and the multitude of other “products of progress.” This incessant venture we have or had in our contemporary societies that inevitably end in imperfection are the “subjects” of this artwork.  Pared down to abstracts ideas and concepts, this work reflects on man’s passionate need and desire for the PERFECT and this journey’s never ending result in failure.  And yet, in the face of this knowledge, we continue the odyssey, sometimes out of necessity and sometimes out of folly, setting goals for achievement and “growth” that all too often result in disaster, in the destruction of our environment as we know it, in totalitarian leaders that we despise, in religious wars that never cease, in stressful patterns of existing, in “poisoned” drugs and food, in the manifestation of extinct species, etc.  The fools quest, necessary and absurd, becomes the fodder of contemplation in this work that attempts to be all to(o) perfect.

                                  William C. Maxwell

                                   January 2005