Projections c. 1950

Bill Bomar made this print, Projections, most likely using etching, maybe aquatint, to create a play of black and white shapes and textures. It’s a real process piece, you can almost feel him layering each mark. I love the way these forms hover in space, they are both there and not there. Look closely and you can see how the different shapes lock together, each one creating the negative space for the other. Notice the white shape, like a keyhole, or a body, with that strange patterned circle at the top, that could be a head or maybe a doorknob. What does this strange figure reveal? Then there's the circle on the right, sliced into four segments by white lines, like a pie chart of the unknown. It's all about the push and pull, the way the shapes interlock and create new forms out of the old. Bomar reminds me a little of the work of Terry Winters, who also used printmaking to explore biomorphic abstraction. Ultimately, this piece shows us that art is not about answers, but about questions.