William “Bill” Charles Creevy Jr (1942-2020) [RA 2007-2020]

First name: William “Bill” ;
Middle name: Charles ;
Last name: Creevy ;

Member: Non-resident artist member ; 
Begin: 2007 ;
End: 2020 ;

Biography:

Bill Creevy (1942-2020) was a widely exhibited, award-winning artist with over a dozen solo shows to his credit. Deemed a Master Pastelist (MP-PSA) by the Pastel Society of America, he was named to their Hall of Fame in 2011. Creevy received his MFA from Louisiana State University, where he studied with artist/designer Paul Dufour and such influential post war figurative revival painters as Paul Georges and Gabriel Landerman. His Masters’ Thesis Project was a suite of intaglio prints produced under LSU’s School of Art and Design Professor Emeritus, James Burke ( a student of renowned Argentinian printmaker Maricio Lasansky.

Creevy left New Orleans for NYC in the late 60’s when he was among the first class of Max Beckmann Fellows at the Brooklyn Museum Art School.

Creevy’s work has been featured in countless group shows throughout the nation and abroad and is represented in significant private, corporate, and museum collections.

He was an activist/advocate for artists who, like he, were carving out affordable living/studio spaces in former industrial neighborhoods like NYC’s NoHo, and SoHo in the 1960s-80s. As a young painter in the city, he reveled in the energy of the Alliance of Figurative Artists, which was an artist-run, often tumultuous, ‘discussion group’ frequented by a majority of the figurative and realist painters and sculptors in and around New York City in the 1970s. Creevy became an early member of The First Street Gallery, a strong influencer in the figurative Co-Op gallery movement, and was a resident artist member of the historic Salmagundi Arts Club in NY’s Greenwich Village. His now-classic The Pastel Book (Watson-Guptill, 1991) inaugurated its “Materials and Techniques” Artist Series and was selected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as being the representative work on pastel technique. It remained in print for 30+ years. The Pastel Book and its companion book, The Oil Painting Book (Watson-Guptill, 1994), have been adopted by college level art courses. Both are still widely available. Creevy produced jacket art for renowned book designer Alexander Gotfryd (see cover art Forest Gump). Creevy’s ‘day job” for 20+ years was as a staff artist and designer ( for the Brooklyn Public Library), even as he kept up a strong exhibition career, and worked as freelance writer on topics like profiles of artists and features on art technique in publications such as Pastel Journal, The Pastelagram (PSA), and American Artist.

Creevy died from complications of Covid-19 on Monday morning December 7, 2020, at Brooklyn (NY) Methodist Hospital. A native of New Orleans, Creevy was predeceased by his parents William C. Creevy Sr. and Frances Lester Creevy, sister Kathryn Creevy Binnings, and Kathryn’s son Jerry Binnings. He is survived by his partner of 25 years Barbara A. Genco (also a Salmagundian), his stepson Andrew Genco Rosenthal, and Kathryn Binnings’ children and grandchildren.