Whether through painting, drawing or photography, multidisciplinary artist Billy Sullivan (BFA 1968 Fine Arts) is a master at capturing fleeting moments and making them into something extraordinary. Sullivan’s career has been based on the documentation of loved ones, friends and acquaintances, and day-to-day life. His work spans a number of eras, and some images appear in pieces created at different times of his life. “I’ve gone back and found photographs of things that I hadn’t thought about [painting or drawing] before,” says Sullivan. “When I do that, it brings me right back to the time when the photographs were taken.”

One could say Sullivan is a visual diarist documenting people who fascinate him, and when he does, these people to a certain degree become his muses. “I didn’t know they were muses, I thought they were just friends,” he says. “Creating work based on them becomes an intimate thing about my memory and what I was and am currently thinking about that person.”

The social aspects of Sullivan’s work and life led him behind the camera lens to find his subjects. “It’s logical for the way I think,” he says. “I spent a lot of time out late at night, running around—I wasn’t going to sit there and draw people, so I took their picture.” Dinner parties, New York City clubs (like Arthur’s, the Mudd Club and Studio 54 in the late 1970s and early ’80s), fashion shows, social functions and casual encounters all have served as backdrops that lend a glimpse into Sullivan’s experiences. His drawings and paintings are then based on these photographic archives. It was not until much later that he even thought of exhibiting the photographs in galleries: “Some of the pictures were good and could stand alone as photographs.” he says.

Color is an important part of Sullivan’s work. His vibrant palette is based on the rosy light that comes at the end of the day or the light in places like the famous Manhattan artists’ hangout Max’s Kansas City. “My color palette comes straight out of the chemicals of Kodachrome film; it was the best color film you could ever get.” Sullivan says. “Color is a very important part of my visuals and the way I see things. However, I do like the immediacy of black ink drawings as well.”

“Each person in one of his pictures (whether rendered by hand or with a camera) has an aura of being cared about, if not ardently cared for,” wrote art critic Peter Schjeldahl in “Fame Theory,” his essay about Sullivan for ARTPIX Notebooks. Viewing these intimate portraits of specific people and private moments from Sullivan’s life, one gets a sense that one knows these people and we are perhaps slightly envious of their lives. But Sullivan wants you to join the party, not to be excluded from it, and by sharing his images with the world the viewer is given a front-row seat to their allure and mystique.

Sullivan is a member of the BFA Photography Department faculty, and his work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions; he is represented by Nicole Klagsbrun in New York and Regen Projects in Los Angeles. Sullivan’s work can be found in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts.