Alex Prestia

I can’t tell you the exact moment I first laid eyes on one of Bill Ward’s drawings. I was born into the Internet age. Whether I was scrolling through a discussion forum or an online archive of gay erotica, I couldn’t say. I can say it would have been sometime in my teenage years. Yet, I would have been well into my late twenties before I’d ever held a paper copy of Drummer in my hands. Even so, Bill’s artwork is so striking and distinctive. I knew I had stumbled across something to remember.

Bill Ward amplified and glorified masculinity. He eschewed any concept of toxicity or shame. He’d create every fantasy he could imagine to a hyperbole of the masculine form. He celebrated gay sex in a time where fear mongering and erasure were the norms. He didn’t hide. His artwork declared the legitimacy of desire. He showcased the pervasive link between homosocial pageantry and homosexual actuality. Bill pulled the curtain back.

I knew from a very early age that I was gay. I knew it, and I’d never questioned it. My family couldn’t help but recognize it. So it was never in doubt. So much so, that it was a surprise to me when I learned that it could be something people did doubt. Of course, I also learned early on that the world and those around me didn’t approve. Still and all, what I “knew” back then, Bill re-affirmed for me and for the rest of us.

Some of my earliest fantasies were drawings I’d scribble on paper in secret. Muscular torsos and meaty bulges. Large biceps and hulking quads. I had zero artistic skill at that age. Yet, I couldn’t keep the images in my head. I had to bring them into the world with me. And then I’d tear the drawings up and flush them down the toilet. I didn’t want to put those fantasies on full display. I wanted my own world to be only for me back then.

And even so, the gay nature of things seemed to be everywhere I looked. Men were always feeding off of each others sexual energies. They built their social structures around it. To gain the upper hand, they’d put camaraderie and lust in competition for preeminence. Admiration and approval lying in wait. Acrimony and feebleness the consequences for breaking the boundaries. The straight world struggled to uphold the concept of masculinity without putrefying it. And to be gay meant to be outside, to be other.

Bill Ward seemed keen to this spectacle. He removed the boundaries and the consequences. He proposed that camaraderie, lust, and competition were in harmony. And he used hypersexualization to drive home his point of view. Masculinity wasn’t the sole property of heteronormativity. And homosexual desire belonged – everywhere and to anyone.

I enjoyed collaborating with the spirit of Bill Ward on this project. His hand and his pen created beautiful strokes of fascination. He wasn’t always consistent in his focus, and yet he could detail an excitement anywhere on the page.

I approached this collaboration to add a color story to each page of his world. I sought to match a pallet to his fixations, his arousals, and his structuring. I interrupted his narrative continuity to highlight the stability of his vision. Sometimes clean, sometimes busy, sometimes crowded, and often exaggerated.

I would ask anyone who flips through these images to pause and to stare for a moment. How could Bill Ward’s dreamscape respond to where things are now? What arena would Bill Ward parade his inclinations upon? Bill’s brand of imagination could reinvented barriers and overcame restraints. To me, that’s an imagination worth exploring.