Skip to Content

Expert Profile
Photo: William Catling
William Catling, MFA
Chair and Professor, Department of Art; Director, MFA Program
Phone: (626) 387-5726
Email: bcatling@apu.edu
 
Education
MFA, Sculpture, California State University, Fullerton
M.A., California State University, San Francisco
B.A., California State University, San Francisco
Profile
William Catling, MFA, was born in San Francisco and grew up in the Bay Area. He decided at an early age that art was what he wanted to do for life. Catling taught high school for ten years and then moved to Southern California to begin teaching here at APU in 1991.

As an artist, he attempts to address the loss of our natural sense of being human, that is our deeply intuitive sense of ourselves. He believes we have become disconnected from the natural rhythms of life. The figures Catling makes are rough, cracked, aged, reflecting both suffering and the internal capacity to connect to others outside oneself. Such suffering can evoke the viewer's empathy and self-transcendence.

Viewers can embrace the condition of the figures thus engaging themselves in the process of reconnecting by joining in the transcendent element of the work. The work does not eliminate the body's suffering but presents it as a condition for spiritual uplift.
Expertise
20th Century-Contemporary Art
Art and Faith Integrations
Contemporary Sculpture
Gallery preparation
Portfolio Preparation for the Studio Artist
Public Mural Projects