Bill Wray

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William Wray's painting Parking Garage (16"x20") is part of his Urban Landscape series.)

Bill Wray is an American cartoonist and landscape painter. He spent much of his childhood traveling about as an Army brat. As a self-taught artist, he first worked in the animation industry while still a teenager, but eventually, he chose to study at New York's Art Students League.

He began doing commercial illustrations and artwork for comic books in addition to his work in animation for The Ren & Stimpy Show and other shows. His long-run "Monroe" series appeared in more than 100 issues of Mad, and he has also collaborated with Mike Mignola on Hellboy Jr.

A resident of Sierra Madre, California, he is currently concentrating on fine art, doing oil paintings of landscapes, figures and urban settings. A statement by Wray indicates his attitude and approach to his paintings, an attempt to document aspects of urban California that continue to vanish:

The highest compliment I ever received was when a great painter told me my paintings look old. I love the early 20th Century’s art and architecture and work hard to invoke comparisons to that period in my work. I love the idea of capturing what's left of a bygone era; recording it before it’s gone, replaced by a new strip mall. I’ve spent my life studying the artists of that era, reaching for a level of skill and feeling that the modern art world has long dismissed as dull-witted craft. I hope my paintings of these old structures has become less an invocation of nostalgia than an important race to record what is fast disappearing. Every time you find an old factory, a rundown dock or an old shack, a developer is sure to be there trying to convince the city it’s time to renovate. Good for the economy, they say, but bad for the painter looking for interesting subjects to paint. California’s urban pockets of age are disappearing at a record pace, so I have to paint as fast as I can.

[edit] Selected works

• New Mutants vol. 1 #61

[edit] External links

• William Wray
• Big Blown Baby
• Art Interview Online