California Regionalist Paintings
A resident of Sierra Madre, California, Wray 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.
His approach to painting was influenced by Edgar Alwin Payne, Emil Gruppe, J. C. Leyendecker and other artists.
A member of Laguna Plein Air Painters Association, Oil Painters of America and the California Art Club, Wray has participated in workshops with Ray Roberts, Carolyn Anderson, Matt Smith, Eric Merrill, Frank Serrano and George Strickland, in addition to his long term study with Jove Wang.
Read more about this topic: Bill Wray
Famous quotes containing the words california and/or paintings:
“This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York Island.
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”
—Woody Guthrie (1912–1967)
“When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards.... Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)