690. Bill Witherspoon

Bill Witherspoon is a life-long visual artist, serial entrepreneur, and lover of sky. In his six decades, living on and off in the High Steppe desert in southeastern Oregon, he has painted watercolor skies, practiced ancient art as spiritual discipline, and weathered that pristine geological expanse. As an artist, over the last four decades, Bill has mounted 40 one-man exhibitions of paintings, prints, and sculptures (1968 – 2020), in addition to desert public art projects. He is also the founder and Creative Director of The Sky Factory, a fine arts, digital technology, and cognitive science studio that designs and manufactures the world’s only research-verified virtual skylights—Luminous SkyCeilings and Luminous Virtual Windows. His first book, Enter Space—Stories from the High Desert, lays witness to a life surrounded by that rare, unsummoned vastness; one that those of us steeped in the ceaseless churn of urban life can now imagine living through the faithful record of the artist’s experience. Book: Enter Space: Stories from the High Desert Sri Yantra: The Oregon Desert Mystery FULL MOVIE Transcript and Summary of this interview Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group Interview recorded September 3, 2023. Video and audio below. Audio also available as a Podcast. YouTube Video Chapters:   00:00:00 - Introduction and Background of Bill Witherspoon 00:04:49 - A Life of Adventure and Silence 00:09:25 - Being Swept Away by the Waterfall 00:12:52 - A Life-Threatening Water Rescue 00:16:34 - The Near-Drowning Experience That Changed My Life 00:21:02 - The Transcendent Experience of Meditation 00:24:35 - Climbing the Radio Tower and Facing Danger at Sea 00:29:01 - Seeing More Deeply 00:32:33 - Healing the Eye of the Heart 00:36:42 - The Burning Shell 00:40:15 - Learning and Growth through Perseverance 00:43:50 - The Sri Yantra: An Instance of a Law of Nature 00:48:10 - The Bindu 00:52:38 - The New Kind of Seeing 00:57:00 - The Essence of Memory and Love 01:01:06 - A Slideshow of Photographic Events in the Wilderness 01:05:39 - Living in Harmony with Rattlesnakes 01:08:46 - Witnessing Violence and the Impact 01:12:55 - Encounters with Rattlesnakes 01:16:22 - The Strange Book and its Contents 01:20:36 - The Presence of Divine Intelligence 01:24:30 - Accessing Deeper Levels of Consciousness through Meditation 01:32:35 - The Horrors of Being on Death Row 01:35:35 - The Influence of Human Presence 01:40:37 - "Goodbye," when we went looking for wild horses 01:44:58 - Reflections on an Interesting Life 01:49:33 - Going Deeper in Consciousness 01:53:02 - Building a Beautiful Corporation 01:56:56 - The Skill of Self-Reflection 02:00:18 - Gratitude and Farewell