Symbolic Constructs of History The works of Bernard Williams deal with aspects of the Old American west and many of the forces at play in the historical development of the place we call "the west". The paintings and constructions utilize signs and symbols from various cultures that have converged upon the North American region. Other paintings grow from a focus on the historical, cultural, and socio-political activities whirling about during the times, becoming expressions of a broader American story.
Stirred by revisionist historians who have recently opened new perspectives from which to examine western development, Bernard has found fertile creative grounds among this rethinking and re-imaging of the western myth and the American story. Particularly influential has been Patricia Nelson Limerick's "The Legacy Of Conquest", Quintard Taylor's "Beyond the Racial Frontier", and William L. Katz's "The Black West."
Bernard's paintings attempt a reconsideration of western heritage along with some rethinking of how western paintings and traditional history paintings are composed and stylistically delivered. Of particular interest has been the Black Cowboys, Buffalo Soldiers, Black-Indian relations, African and Native American arts, and the west as a place shared and constructed by multiple cultures including Anglos, Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians.
When speaking of his work, Bernard talks of a "museum aesthetic" that he has developed. "The museums around the world are houses of collecting, holding vast stores of images and information. This intrigues me." Countless objects and fragments from numerous obscure cultures are gathered, collected, displayed or carefully held out of sight in our museums and their warehouses: art museums, natural history museums, and also the zoos: our animal collections or animal museums. Bernard has actually referred to or titled some of his works as museums, cultural collections, or culture charts, store houses of culture. The resulting statements are highly graphic, congested diagrams.
The recent works by Bernard Williams are indeed a new kind of history painting. They are symbolic, associative histories that position images, or symbols next to each other sometimes to be read, interpreted, or analyzed. A chronological reading of the paintings, however, does not flow with continuity. The histories are impulsive and attempting to manage the complexities. The paintings and drawings are overwhelmed with historical details and cultural products touching upon the American colonial era, the civil war, the cowboy era, and related events. Words, phrases, and sketchy portraits are some of the collected material from which these works are constructed.
Bernard has added to his historical recollections an on going series of large portraits featuring cowboys, Buffalo soldiers, and civil war soldiers. "I have always been very interested in portraits, especially large heads and figures. The work of realist artists like Jack Beal, Alfred Leslie, and Chuck Close have been very influential. I've been searching for a complexity and sophistication in my large heads, similar to that of Chuck Close. My heads however, have little connection to photographs and end up rather quirky and personal. I enjoy the emotional depth in the heads that Philip Guston has painted. I'm looking for a gutsy, personal, and authentic portrait. Some of the heads are very different from the others. My interests are broad. I want to combine the heads with the images and symbols from other works. I still want to place figures in space and make reference to traditional perspective and composition. Then again, I may part with this desire. I go back and forth on this issue, and I guess my paintings do too. But there is a flow and connection within it all."
The cowboy heads are quite compelling, even at first, considering their scale, style, and content. These large heads begin to evoke the popular "Marlboro Man," but Bernard's cowboys are black and so become a critique of the Marlboro cowboys. Have we ever seen a black Marlboro man? Bernard has dramatically introduced the black cowboy. This introduction ushers a re-imaging and re-thinking of the white cowboy and his mythic significance. The black cowboy signals the African-American contribution to the American western story. The myth is altered, hopefully shattered. The artist says, "Hollywood and many history writers are mighty guilty of misrepresenting the story. I got pretty angry when I began to read about black cowboys. One out of every three or four cowboys was either black or Mexican. We've been fed this image of the white cowboy, and I'm out to retake some visual territory with these paintings. My cowboys are symbols of the untold and whitewashed history of colored people who are part of the American story going all the way back to the American Revolution and forward to World War II." The Buffalo Soldier images also speak of a complex role that African-Americans played in shaping the country. The Buffalo Soldiers were instrumental in ending some of the last Native American resistance to the European conquest of the west.
Bernard paints these characters as individuals in turmoil. They are not happy but are proud. Their burden is as great as any. They serve a cruel master, but serve gallantly only to be cast aside, historically guttered. Retrieving and reinterpreting details of the American story is central to Bernard's impulses. The stories are various, intriguing, and enlightening. The artist takes on multiple stories and fragments thereof, layering and lining his canvases with rows of this procured material. Time barriers are crossed, intersected, and allowed to coexist in a single work. The viewer is urged to consider his or her place in the forceful flow of culture and events. The viewer encounters some well known and some not so well known characters of this documentary play.
History certainly has a hold on this artist. Bernard Williams seems committed to shoveling through aspects of American history and related stories. He evokes issues, events, and ideas that speak to the continuity and complexity of a nation's life. His critique of history and culture is often subtle. History is personally incorporated and relived by the artist. The past is never over and always beginning, altering the model of history and creating the past anew.

In the United States, a myth about American identity has been created based on the image of "the cowboy" (cow herders) and on ideas about the expansion of European American populations into Native American territories in the western part of the United States. The image of the cowboy became a popular symbol of male independence and strength, and of a concept called "manifest destiny"- that European Americans were "destined" to take ownership of Native American land. This image of the cowboy was successfully used to advertise Marlboro brand cigarettes through the invention of a tough, handsome, cigarette smoking cowboy character called "the Marlboro Man." Bernard Williams' paintings explore myths about American identity by putting back into historical images those characters that have been left out of the popular versions of history. For instance, popular images of the cowboy (such as the Marlboro Man) are traditionally White, even though a huge percentage of American cowboys were actually Black. Bernard has painted a large, impressive portrait of a Black Marlboro Man. Bernard also invents symbols and paints words on his paintings as a way of asking questions about American history. For instance, he puts images from African culture into his paintings as a reminder that African Americans have an African heritage. Students may want to decide who has been left out of popular stories about history, and may want to create artworks that put those people back in the story.