Art can evoke a variety of emotions and correlations, but an artist whose work is now displayed at a Central West End gallery is likely to have one clear association: with the St. Louis Cardinals.
“The adult world tends to push people into a box of what they are, their identity, right? For me, I'm sort of the Cardinals guy, I will always probably be that,” said Bill DeWitt III.
He’s likely not off base. How could anyone be anything but "the Cardinals guy" when his family bought the club from Anheuser-Busch in the 1990s and when he's been president of the team since 2008? But as he debuted his work to the public for the first time at Square One Gallery this summer, he’s officially also Bill DeWitt III, the artist.
“I think it's a bit of a random thing that maybe wouldn't have been expected, for sure,” he said. “That's true of, I think, a lot of people that have these artistic or creative sides.”
Despite majoring in art history as a student at Yale University, DeWitt said art is a passion he largely set aside until the past few years, when he started experimenting with an iPad graphic design app called Procreate.
“That was fun for me, because it made me realize that I was lacking it,” he said.
He began by modifying the colors, lines and patterns of images he found intriguing — an old coin, a vintage baseball photograph — and eventually began printing them out and layering them with acrylic paints.
“I just started getting good at that process of working it through digitally getting it printed, overlaying with acrylics. And then thinking, you know, this is starting to look kind of good,” DeWitt said.
Then he started receiving endorsements from the most valuable of critics: his children.
“My kids were like, ‘send me one to my school dorm,’” he said. “Then their friends were like, ‘Can I get one?’ And that's what was like the inspiration, maybe I'm onto something here.”
Further encouragement has come from his friend and creative mentor, artist and gallery partner Ted Collier.
“I was so blown away because he's so, you know, typecast, for lack of a better word, as such a sports guy,” said Collier.
The adage that "you don’t buy the art, you buy the artist" may or may not apply here, said Collier, despite the regional familiarity with the DeWitt name.
“I don't know how many fanatical baseball fans are going to come in here and buy paintings, but that's really not what it's about,” he said. “It's about the ability to kind of express yourself and give people that platform.”
Even people whose family owns a baseball team.
“There’s a lot of people that you never would think in a million years would be someone that needed that creative outlet,” Collier said. “And he's got talent, and it just needs to be exposed.”
DeWitt’s pieces at the gallery include a series inspired by a photo of human skulls, a common motif in modern and classical art, that he calls an experiment in sanitizing the grim imagery. Others depict the inside of several different cathedrals, printed on large canvases and layered in monochromatic hues.
“A cathedral struck me as both a common image that somebody would recognize and get a feel for right away, but also somewhat generic,” he said. “The more I manipulated it, the more interesting the image got, and yet it still remained obviously a cathedral.”
Several canvases are coated in “diamond dust,” which could be a poetic description in DeWitt’s other world of dirt clouding over an infield. Here, it refers to a high-grade glitter that gives each painting a subtle sparkle. It’s the type of creative flourish the sports executive isn’t always known for.
For instance: The club unveiled its City Connect jerseys this year, an MLB promotion in which teams were encouraged to break the mold with totally new uniform designs. Instead, the Cardinals offered fans a jersey strikingly similar to the team's typical gear.
“I think the Cardinals franchise is so unique, and there's such a wonderful visual history,” said DeWitt, who has explained that he rejected Nike’s attempts to get him to go too rogue. (He does note this is the first red jersey in the team’s regular rotation.)
“There’s a certain thematic continuity there of all the logos for over 140 years,” he said. “And to go completely radical with sort of the, I don't know, the neon, whatever — no birds on the bat, that just felt like a bridge too far.”
He said he’d have considered something “a little bit crazier” with any other franchise and would be open to exercising more artistic license in any future City Connect releases.
It’s not the only way in which he’s hesitant to take too much artistic license with the Cardinals brand. Though he’s dabbled in his own depictions of birds on bats and other baseball themes, and even gifted Adam Wainwright a portrait to celebrate his retirement, DeWitt intentionally kept clear of that imagery for his first public show.
“I definitely didn't want to lead with that, because that feels like maybe an obvious trading on what I'm already known for,” he said. “I'd sort of rather develop a reputation in the art side of things separate and apart. But I certainly wouldn't rule it out.”
As this side of him becomes more public, DeWitt said he hopes people enjoy the art he creates and maybe even feel inspired to break out of whatever their version of their “Cardinals guy” box may be.
“‘If he can do it, maybe I could do it,” he said.
