Currently on View: Ford William – The God of Avoidance

This exhibition round includes works provided by Ford William which will be on view in the Second Floor Connector Gallery from November 22, 2023  – February 3, 2024.  Lowe Mill A&E invites patrons and art lovers to join us for Open Studio Night, a building-wide experience when our over 150 studios will be open to the public.  The evening also includes receptions for all seven of our gallery spaces. This series gives the public a chance to meet and interact with visiting artists and discuss their work as it is on display and available for purchase. Come out, enjoy a pleasant evening, and maybe you’ll find that special piece of art that speaks to you!  The Open Studio Night reception is Saturday, February 3 from 5-7 pm.

About the exhibit:

The God of Avoidance is the collective experience and feelings of emotional-pain avoidance strategies that humans deploy, deified to express the omnipresent powerful nature this force has had on self-taught artist Ford William’s life. 

You may be familiar with this god. It comes in many forms: procrastination, perfectionism, workaholism, terminal ambivalence, over preparing, dissociation, addictive tendencies, obsessive or compulsive behavior, phobias, anxiety, self-deprecation, self-sabotage, and many more. It is older than any spoken language, so it does not communicate with words. Instead, it converses in the chemical language of emotions. Its primary goal is to protect us, but in Ford’s case, it was overprotective—taking charge in nearly every scenario and not just when it was truly helpful. 

Before identifying this force in his life, Ford’s prior life plans were being derailed entirely by avoidant behaviors. Consciously, he was working himself to the bone to move forward in his life and in his career as an attorney, but the god of avoidance was not on board with these plans. Nothing would ever get finished, decisions were monsters, secondary effects like shame and self-loathing left him spending all of his time and energy symbolically running or hiding. Rock bottom ensued.  

After figuring out that his behavior was being caused by this maladaptive pattern inside of him, he made it a priority to get to know his avoidant force; he learned to communicate with it—in its own language, to reduce the contentiousness between himself and it, and to lessen the god’s influence over his own life. 

He did so via lots of research, therapy, meditation, etc. But he found that he needed a daily activity that made him uncomfortable that would allow him to practice not avoiding, over-and-over, day-after-day. 

He chose to make art, knowing nothing about how or what he was supposed to be doing. Every aspect of it started as a battle, yet he has persevered ever since. It has now become one of his favorite things to do and a great source of joy.

Although relations with the god of avoidance have improved, it remains a present and influential force in Ford’s life. However, each brushstroke, color decision, and piece of art he completes helps this avoidant force to realize that it does not need to be as protective as it has been. Each piece in this show is a tangible representation of Ford’s process of learning to reduce this god’s power while simultaneously expanding his true self. Each artwork is not only an offering to this avoidant force—serving as evidence of his own emotional safety, but also an invitation for others to evaluate their own relationship with the god of avoidance.

About the artist:

Ford William a self-taught artist based in Nashville, TN. He began making art in 2021 and publicly sharing it in 2022 as a therapeutic practice in order to work on overcoming avoidance and shame-based behavior, including perfectionism, procrastination, workaholism, compulsive researching, self-sabotage, and disassociation.

Ford grew up in Houston and spent much of his life in Texas. He went to law school in Dallas and practiced law there for several years before experiencing extreme burnout resulting from constantly having to work around or through his avoidant behavior and anxiety.

After seeking some help and realizing that the avoidant behavior was a symptom of more complex underlying emotional pain, Ford dedicated several years to extensive study of psychology and emotional trauma, learning through self-study and therapy how to exist as a human being rather than as a human doing.

Part of his therapeutic process was to start making art, despite having not done anything artistic since the finger-painting days of childhood. In the two years since starting his art process, Ford has shown in a number of group shows, including La Luz de Jesus’s, “Everything but the Kitchen Sink” in 2023. “The God of Avoidance” marks his third solo show and first time showing in Huntsville.