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Art Interview: When were you born?
William Wray: I was born in 1956 in California.
Art Interview: Did you study art?
William Wray: Yes, I went to the Art Students League in New York City for 5 years in the 80s. All the art at that time was mostly conceptual and as you see my art is more traditional so instead of going directly into fine art I decided to go into commercial art.
Art Interview: Are you working as a commercial artist today?
William Wray: Yes, I still am, but I am trying to make the transition. I have only seriously knuckled down to doing fine art in the form of oil painting for the last two years. I've worked in and out of the comic book and animation industries for the last 20 years. I have a comic strip in Mad Magazine and I was the Art Director for the Ren and Stimpy Show on television. That was what helped me make my move into painting: my staff and I painted a lot of backgrounds for that show.
Art Interview: How are you transitioning from graphic arts to fine arts? Have you found a gallery to represent you?
William Wray: Actually recently the M. J. Higgins Gallery in Los Angeles took some of my paintings. I also have a local gallery in my area Segil Fine Art that shows some of my work. So I am starting to break in. I am in this kind of funny position of having technical expertise, but I am starting at the same position as someone just coming out of school. I'm starting in a whole brand new field since the fine arts business has no relation to the comic/animation business. It probably would have been more natural for me to make the transition by going into the Jux pose, outsider art scene. And I have had a few small shows with bigger cartoon-type paintings, but I found that, for many reasons, that wasn't the direction I wanted to go in.
Art Interview: How large is the inventory of paintings that you are presenting to the art dealers?
William Wray: A gallery took 6 paintings this week and I have over 30 that are of high enough quality to be presented in galleries. I could easily move that up to 50 in the next few months. Most of my work is still small, but I have already started on a series of bigger paintings. I have about 12 good larger one's so far.
Art Interview: What is the average size of your work?
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William Wray
Northern California
2005
Oil on Linen
8" x 10" |
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William Wray: Well I will typically go outside and do a pleinair painting in the size of 8 by 10 inches. I believe the size of paintings I entered in the Art Interview International Online Artists Competition was around 12 by 16 inches. That is a typical small studio painting size, but I am working on bigger works now and I find I can do them at about the same speed. I just did a 24x36 painting of the back alley of the Forum Gallery and enjoyed working larger. I guess that's pretty small relatively speaking for fine art world, I'll get there.
Art Interview: How long does it take you to complete a painting?
William Wray: I very rarely work longer than a day or two on a painting. I might think about it a long time and plan it. It might take me a few months from finding a spot and photographing it or deciding to go there and paint to completing the actual work. When I do pull the trigger it is just a mad rush to get it done. I like to do it in one energetic stroke. In fact I forget to drink water and go to the bathroom when I paint. I hope I don't fuck up my Kidneys to badly for my art.
Art Interview: Do you work primarily with oils?
William Wray: Yes, my background in cartoons was with acrylics and water-based paints. That taught me to be fast because we had to crank those paintings out for TV production. It took me about a year to do anything remotely decent with oils because as you know oils react completely differently from water-based paints. It requires a whole different way of thinking. The cliché water and oil don't mix is appropriate.
Art Interview: Do you believe that working in the animation business assisted you in doing fine art?
William Wray: Well, doing good artwork in one medium relates to another no matter what. I think even if I was doing abstract art, it would relate because of my experience with working with color and making a picture. It is a little bit different to go out into nature or to work from a photo and be a bit more realistic, but all the color theory is the same. I think you just have to understand it a bit more when you are using oils because they are such a complex medium. Oil gives you a wider range of visual expression so it takes more knowledge to master it, if you ever really do.
Art Interview: Do you work directly from life?
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William Wray
Old Industry
2004
Oil on Linen
14" x 18" |
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William Wray: I do with the smaller paintings. I go plain air painting at least a couple times a week. Bigger paintings I do in the studio often from a plein air study. Often I will work directly from a photograph or combination of photographs. I'll just glance at them, never copying directly, just using them as a jumping off point.
Art Interview: Do you find it difficult to work outside with oil paints?
William Wray: Besides sunburn, I love it. Its funny, because you would think it would be difficult, but its not. OK, if you get ambitious and want to hike to the top of mount Everest it would be difficult, but since I have urban subjects I generally don't have to stray too far from my car. I have a painting kit rigged up that fits in a backpack; I throw an umbrella over one of my shoulders and the painting tripod over the other. As long as I don't have to go more than a few hundred yards it's pretty easy. I like being outside. Even in run- down neighborhoods you get the feeling of the place far more than you could from a brief photo session. You interact with the people and come to really understand the picture that you are painting.
Art Interview: How did you begin working in realism?
William Wray: I think that is kind of natural. Every kid in grade school who is artistic has been through that phase where they copy photographs of famous people in magazines. You get all kinds of praise because people say; "Oh that looks just like them" or "That looks just like a photograph". I actually think that that can be a trap because you base everything on rendering and not on a true understanding of what is underneath.
Art Interview: What was it like for you growing up?
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William Wray
Monrovia Station
2005
Oil on Linen
14" x 18" |
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William Wray: Well, I was an Army brat so I traveled all over the world. I didn't have a sense of place until I was 10 when we settled permanently in Southern California. So in a way I have a lot of different influences in me. I grew up in Germany, the Orient and all around the United States.
Art Interview: Did your parents encourage you to become an artist?
William Wray: They didn't really encourage me, but they didn't discourage me either. They both had an artistic bent, especially my Father, but they never pursued it. They were kind of happy that I liked to do art. They had a kind of strange convoluted hands off philosophy because they thought if they encouraged me to do art I might not want to do it. I think they over thought the teenage rebellion syndrome.
Art Interview: When did you decide that you wanted to be an artist?
William Wray: I pretty much knew from the very beginning. I drew from a very young age and I think that I was 13 or 14 when I decided that this is what I was going to do. After getting my first job in a restaurant when I was 15 was what really decided it for me. I didn't want to wash dishes for a living and I'm not technically minded enough to go get a college degree is some other subject.
Art Interview: So how did you proceed in building a career in the arts rather than doing dish washing for the rest of your life?
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