Pathways to a Self   2008

With essays by Thomas McEvilley, Carter Ratcliff and David Carrier, 220 pages
Published by Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany
Available through Galerie Hans Mayer and Walther Konig Publishing, Cologne, Germany

Reviews:
By the early 1970's Beckley had become recognized for his concept-driven juxtapositions of language and photographic image.
In the years that followed, his interest was drawn to the supple, near-abstract articulations of the stems of flowers.
In 2001 he produced a suite of diptychs with the sturdy graceful stems of calla lilies as his primary subject, captured in motion against reductive fields.
The recent images find Beckley at his best...
While there are painterly aspects to Beckley's production, and there are artists who have influenced him - Duchamp, Nauman, and demonstrably now Rothko - the work is first and last photography, not painterly abstraction, and solidly his own.
Edward Leffingwell   Art in America

Beckley's art leads us by innumerable paths back to ourselves.
Rescuing interpretation from routine, he lures our habits of feeling and thought to light.
He brings facets of our humanity into focus, to be recognized and, it may be, refined.
Carter Ratcliff

Beckley gives into the pleasure of looking where one has not looked before... there is a delicate precision to his use of the image.
I don't see it as a conversion or an avowal of faith or dogmatic assertion of beauty.
Rather Beckley still sees beauty: welcome or not, expected or not, there it is - silently still among us.
Thomas McEvilley

I have always loved Bill Beckley's work.
The first time I saw Bill's work, which was at the Museum of Modern Art in the projects gallery, I remember thinking, "Wow, this work is great."
I've always felt connected with Bill's work and feel that it's very relevant to today's contemporary art dialogue.
Jeff Koons

Whistler!
Paul Resika   (Overheard at the opening of the Dervishes in New York)

Artists are rebelling against the visual starkness and political agendas of art of the recent past, and are growing increasingly unafraid to discuss their work with words like "vibrancy," "lushness," even "glamour."
For them beauty is definitely back in style...
Many of today's most articulate defenders of beauty are people like Hickey, Beckley, Schjeldahl.
They reject what they call the strain of intolerance and aesthetic "Puritanism" running through the world.
Tim Cahill   Christian Science Monitor

Bill, you make me laugh!
Italo Scanga