When William Gothard died in November 2015, his son, David Gothard, envisioned a gallery exhibit of his father’s work as a memorial.

While searching through his father’s extensive collection of sketches and paintings, David Gothard began to notice similarities between his work and that of his late father. The result was “William & David Gothard, Father & Son, Humor & Pathos” at the Ronald K. De Long Gallery, Penn State Lehigh Valley, Center Valley, Upper Saucon Township.

Although the senior Gothard was a fine art painter and his son considers himself an illustrator, David related, “My sensibilities are very much from the fine art realm. I grew up in a house of a painter and formed opinions based on the philosophies and sensibilities that my father held. They, in time, shaped my own sensibilities and thoughts. I see where they came from. I see the roots to how I view the world.

“I can see the same kind of sense of humor that my father had in his work. I see it occurring in mine. I see the voice of outrage in both our work. I see the empathy, the sorrow for the world’s problems in both of our work. I see now more relation between the two bodies of work than I ever did before.”

Among the works on display by the prolific painter William Gothard (1932-2015): figure drawings of his wife and muse of 60 years; sketches of jazz musicians, boxing, war and suffering; portraits of William Gothard’s family, and self-portraits of the senior Gothard.

David Gothard graduated from Pratt Institute, where he teaches drawing classes. He was a regular contributor of editorial graphics to the opinion pages of The the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He also has created illustrations for advertising campaigns and children‘s books.

Says David Gothard, “I always liked the idea of complementing something else. So an illustrator gets an article and has to understand the root meaning of the article and then create an image that doesn’t necessarily illustrate the rhetoric, but illustrates the humanity behind the argument, whatever it is.”

At the artists’ reception Sept. 8, David Gothard’s daughter, Anna, a singer-songwriter, and her partner, Kate Foster entertained. The exhibit concluded Oct. 10.