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William Slater, known variously as Bill, Billy or Weeyum, lived among us here in the lower Skagit River area some forty years. He hailed from the other coast, an estuary that had been famously spoiled.

Bill taught art for a while in New York City at Hunter College and said he hated it. He had befriended some abstract expressionists of that time and place and was scheduled to debut at one of the city's most illustrious galleries. And just as his star was rising, he bailed. After a good long meander through the United States, he found his way to a place his friend Tom Robbins described as "far from the centers of personal ambition."

If Bill's roots were in East Coast abstract expressionism, he transplanted that sensibility into the rich mud of the Skagit Valley. Here he became a much admired and influential painter in a community full of painters. His keenness for drawing allowed him to move in and out of many genres and subjects. He animated his landscape, figure and still life work with an energy that seemed to dance its way through his body.

Bill was a friend to some, and mentor to many. He didn't seek out students. We were attracted intuitively to his peculiarities and kindness. Some of us were invited for corncakes, his specialty, and stayed for lessons on life. He taught some, like myself, how to build a sturdy stretcher, one that was "happy" to support canvas and paint. He taught some to sail. There was no sailor more relaxed and attentive to weather and sea. He himself was a student of tides and current, and would often comment about the vagaries of personal relationships or fortune with "The tide comes in and the tide goes out."

Painting was not a discipline with William. He was in it for the joy. That said, he was a firm believer in housekeeping. He made a clear distinction between carelessness, which would bring unwanted chaos, and being carefree, which would attract the "Happy Accident." He obeyed impulse and, as he often said, his subjects were both everything he'd ever loved, and also the act of painting itself. He became reflexive, and conscious, painting and watching himself paint simultaneously.

A true visionary, he saw what the rest of us missed. Sometimes it was a beautiful accident of dripped paint, or a small plant that he'd guide a companion around, or sometimes it was a certain energy around a human being or animal. (I observed him once nimbly avoiding a confrontation with someone after he saw "sparks coming off their head"!)

What he had to teach was beyond art or seamanship. As the years pass since his death, I see William as a man whose life was a message in itself. Gandhi's word for it was Satyagraha. Like many of his generation, he studied some Eastern principles: Wu Wei, Wabi Sabi, the way of the Tao, the I Ching. But unlike most, these once popular ideas became his very way of being in the world.

William lived enoughness. After years of poverty few of us could imagine, raising a son as a widower, I saw his star rise again, this time in the Pacific Northwest. His paintings found their way into major collections all over the country and internationally, too. He prospered, manifesting his dream of a magnificent sailboat named Satori, building a home on the edge of his beloved Salish Sea, all the while tending a life of sweet simplicity.

William made passage in July of 2007.

Portions of this essay are excerpted from "Far from the Centers of Personal Ambition: the Life and Paintings of William Slater."

Maggie Wilder is a La Conner artist, activist and writer.