Amador County Artists Association: Gallery 10 features William Porteous and Anne Marie Fielding in December

Gallery 10 is delighted to be showcasing longtime gallery members, Bill Porteous and Anne Marie Fielding as Featured Artists for December. The gallery will host a reception for this wonderful couple at the gallery, 15 Eureka St., Sutter Creek, on Saturday, December 3, 2-5 P.M. The show will hang all month. You are encouraged to visit the gallery Thursday-Monday, 11-5, to see the artwork.

Bill Porteous is known best for his bronze sculptures. He began learning how to cast bronze figures when he was asked by the 11th Airborne, 511 Parachute Infantry division to make a monument to honor the service given by so many young men during WW II. Bill had no experience casting bronze, so he spent three years learning the process at a foundry in Napa, CA, commuting from Amador County almost daily. Bill had an image in his mind of a young soldier, his arm raised in victory, from a photo taken for Yank Magazine. This young man was immortalized in bronze by Bill, after his years of training, and set on a monument that stands at Fort Benning, GA, the “Home of the Infantry.”

Bill continued to cast figures of soldiers in bronze for many years, many of his pieces now in a collection at a museum in Fort Campbell, KY. Others may be seen at Gallery 10, and at Bill and Anne Marie’s home in rural Jackson. His collection is impressive!

Bill is also a fine oil painter, having studied with Howard Rees when he first moved to Amador County. His oil paintings are often outsized images, featuring Native Americans in beautiful landscape settings. Bill admits he paints “for his own amazement,” enjoying the process of creation, the feel of pushing the oil paint around on a canvas. Gallery 10 will feature at least one of these outsized, magnificent oil paintings during December.

Anne Marie Fielding, Bill’s wife, is also skilled at bronze casting. Several of her bronze animals are shown at Gallery 10. She enjoys painting also, and has a large collection of oils, watercolors and pastels. One of her lovely pastels, of sheep in a meadow among autumn foliage, won Best of Show at the Amador County Fair Art Show a few years ago. Anne Marie, originally from Switzerland, was living in Australia with her first husband, managing a business as a massage therapist, when she first began to paint. But it was when she came to Amador County, to visit her sister, who was living in Jackson, that she met Bill and learned how to cast bronze figures.

Today both Bill and Anne Marie continue to paint. Anne Marie is exploring abstract design for this new show at Gallery 10.

Please come meet this fascinating couple at the gallery, Dec. 5, 2-5 P.M. and enjoy the variety of artwork they have created during their years together!