The Bill Alexander Story – A Happy Time

One evening, about a month after that first taping Don phoned Bill. “Bill,” he said, “we’ve shown the program around and we’ve gotten tremendous response. The station management wants to go for it. They want us to do a series. How soon can you come back in?”

Bill knew now that he could beat that intimidating camera. He went into training. He painted every day until he had the timing down exactly — twenty-seven minutes and forty seconds. When he practiced, he took complex paintings and broke them down into elementary steps. He simplified his brush strokes to show the way that colors blended on the happy canvas. “It is, after all,” he told himself, “a happy time, this television business.” The next time he went in front of the camera, it was a piece of cake.

Don told Bill later that during the taping of the pilot, one of the college’s art professors came by and watched a bit of the taping. “What’s that guy doing out there? That’s not the way we teach art around here!” he told Don. That surprised Don because he had already decided to call the program “The Art of Oil Painting with Bill Alexander.”

After the art professor left, Don was watching Bill finish the painting. “You know,” he said to Bill’s agent, “that may not be how they teach art around here, but I think people can learn to paint by watching Bill. The skill he displays in doing a completed landscape in thirty minutes is amazing. It does seem like magic!” That’s how Don came up with the title for the program — “The Magic of Oil Painting”.

Everything seemed to happen at the same time in the beginning of 1974. For years, Walter Foster had published art books of every kind. They were good, solid instructional books for anyone who wanted to create great art. Bill had known Foster for years in Los Angeles, but Foster never asked Bill to do a book for him. As luck would have it, just when the television program got started Foster asked Bill to do a book on oil painting. Don agreed to let them use “The Magic of Oil Painting” as the book title. The television series helped the book become a bestseller. The book helped attract viewers to public television stations.

Something Missing

Bill’s fortunes had finally turned around. Something, though, was still missing for the television viewers.

During the programs Bill talked about the brushes and the other tools he used. And, of course, he talked about his paints, especially, the white paint. He called it a “magic” white and, as you know, it was the way he started all his magnificent paintings. Viewers began writing and calling KOCE. They wanted to know where they could buy “Bill Alexander’s Magic White” and the other tools he used in his painting.

Bill travelled so much during his lifetime, he left a trail of tool manufacturers behind him. A company near Montreal made Bill’s palette knife. Another company in Wisconsin made Bill’s brushes. When Bill painted in the shopping malls or when he held classes, Margarete displayed them for sale. Bill wondered, though, how could viewers use his techniques without having the proper tools? The tools Bill developed were instrumental to the success of his method of painting. “Magic White” was still another problem.

Inventing Magic White

As we related earlier, Bill had been looking for a white paint with the right kind of consistency and slow drying power. When they were living in In Los Angeles, he used to set up big vats at night and would try to mix the pigment, oil, turpentine, and dryer himself. He’d experiment and mix these ingredients in twenty and thirty gallon vats. He and Margarete tried to market the paint with their own label. But the mixture was never exactly right, and they didn’t know how to market it as well as they should.

When they moved to Vancouver, Bill decided to contact a chemist. Somebody told him about a Dr. Much, who worked with a large paint company. Bill contacted him and related his problems. Dr. Much researched the issue. He interviewed professors and painters who had struggled with the same problem. He began to experiment with combinations of over twenty different compounds. Over a couple of months, he discovered a way to mix them together at different times during the chemical reaction process. He also discovered a critical ingredient which he called a “fixanthropic”. This ingredient held the compounds together in the right consistency so that colors could blend on the canvas.

Over the years, Bill tried to market Magic White with different partners. Unfortunately, those relationships didn’t work out as well as Bill hoped. Now, with the requests coming in from viewers, Bill wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

The success of the television program kept Bill’s phone ringing all the time. One evening, he received a phone call from Sid Knudsen. That phone call would offer Bill his solution.

Chapter Nineteen: Sid