Bill Paul has been painting landscapes since he was knee-high to a
billy goat.  He grew up in rural middle Georgia on the family farm
near Wadley.   He learned to love and respect the land and it’s
critters at an early age. His private gardens and zoos were in the
ditches along the dirt roads, which passed through the farm.  There he admired a wide range of wildflowers, birds, and animals who claimed those ditches as home--snakes, frogs and toads, Giant green grasshoppers, June bugs, damsel flies and dragon flies and many other creatures. Today the roads are paved, the ditches are drained  [no more tadpoles, salamanders and lizards] and the crops are sprayed from the air---no more yellow and blue butterflies along the edges of mud puddles.


Paul still recalls the smell of the freshly turned earth from spring
planting, the smell of honeysuckle in the summer, and the odor of hay and cotton from the fall harvests.  These memories of the land as it once was are part of his love for the land today. These recollections generate a great concern about growing development, sprawl and congestion, which is destroying green space and habitats.

Paul’s paintings have been shown in more than 40 one-person
exhibitions and they have been included in several hundred group exhibitions. His paintings are in oil, acrylic and watercolor.  He has organized several hundred exhibitions and taught art and art history in higher education for 43 years before retirement as Professor Emeritus from The University of Georgia in 2002.  He lives in Athens where he and his family have hosted paint-outs at his barn studio and Splitbeard Meadow.