Art can evoke a variety of emotions and correlations, but an artist whose work is now part of a Central West End gallery is likely to have one clear association: with the St. Louis Cardinals.
“The adult world tends to push people into a box of what they are, their identity, right? For me, I'm sort of the Cardinals guy, I will always probably be that,” said Bill DeWitt III.
He’s likely not off base. How could anyone be anything but "the Cardinals guy" when his family bought the club from Anheuser-Busch in the 1990s, and when he's been president of the team since 2008? But as he debuted his work to the public for the first time at Square One Gallery this summer, he’s officially also Bill DeWitt III, the artist.
“I think it's a bit of a random thing that maybe wouldn't have been expected, for sure,” he said. “That's true of, I think, a lot of people that have these artistic or creative sides.”
Despite majoring in art history as a student at Yale University, art is a passion he says he largely set aside until the past few years, when he started experimenting with an iPad graphic design app called Procreate.
“That was fun for me, because it made me realize that I was lacking it,” said DeWitt.
He began by modifying the colors, lines, and patterns of images he found intriguing — an old coin, a vintage baseball photograph — and eventually began printing them out and layering them with acrylic paints.
“I just started getting good at that process of working it through digitally getting it printed, overlaying with acrylics. And then thinking, you know, this is starting to look kind of good,” he said.
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