William “Bill” Bailey, the longtime educator and contemporary American painter known for his serene but austere still lifes featuring eggs and vessels of different shapes and sizes—as well as his female figures and landscapes drawn from memory and imagination—has died. He passed away on April 13 at his home in Branford, Connecticut, due to complications from an existing illness. The artist was eighty-nine years old.
“The world just kind of stops in Bailey’s paintings,” wrote Jeff Perrone in the March 1979 issue of Artforum. “The types and styles of pottery seem deliberately chosen for their anonymous, context-free timelessness. They are the most tastefully simple and humble of objects, absolutely nonopulent. Anything excessive, any overt emotional or economic quality, would ruin the unchanging standard, which the paintings hold as virtue.”