Noirsville Noir short of the Month

An great animation work in progress from artist Warren Criswell.

William Wilson

(Icarus Films)

A bad case of the flying aspidistra.

"We met at a late hour of the night; for our debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning. The wine flowed freely, and there were not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions.... I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper within my ear.... 'Scoundrel!' I said in a voice husky with rage ... 'you shall not dog me unto death!" ...

(Edgar Allen Poe, from "William Wilson")

WARNING: This video is rated NFLGS for Nudity, Foul Language and Gratuitous Sex.

"I was an only child. My mother said giving birth was a trip to hell, and one trip was enough for her. And then I, the little devil she produced probably reinforced that decision. I was a loner as a kid, the kind that grow up to be serial killers, bank robbers or artists. I didn't want to kill anybody, but stole a watch in the third grade, got caught and took up art. They haven't caught me art that yet."

Warren Criswell

Short Bio

Warren Criswell was born in West Palm Beach, Florida during hurricane season in 1936 and has lived in Arkansas since his bus broke down there in 1978. Primarily a self-taught painter, Criswell is also a printmaker, sculptor and animator. He has had 51 solo exhibitions in the United States and one in Taiwan. His work has been included in 73 group exhibitions in New York, Atlanta, Washington DC, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, Germany and Taiwan, and is represented in the permanent collections of many institutions, including: The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts; the McKissick Museum of the University of South Carolina; The Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA; Historic Arkansas Museum, Little Rock, AR; the University of Arkansas at Little Rock; Capital Arts Center, Taipei, China; the University of Central Arkansas; Hendrix College, Conway, AR; the Center for Arts & Science of SE Arkansas; and the Central Arkansas Library System, as well as in private many private collections, including those of actor Walton Goggins and author Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and corporate collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.

In 1996 he was awarded a fellowship grant for painting and works on paper by the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2003 an Individual Artist Fellowship Grant for painting and drawing by the Arkansas Arts Council. He has also been awarded the Arksnsas Governor's Individual Artist's Award for 2021. Warren Criswell is currently represented by M2 Gallery in Little Rock.