Bill Wray
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cartoonist and landscape painter, notable for his Urban Landscape series of paintings, his many pages for Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...
and his contributions to The Ren & Stimpy Show. He has used the name Bill Wray for his cartoon creations and William Wray for his work as a fine artist.
Wray spent much of his childhood traveling about as an Army brat, reading comic books and watching animated cartoons. At the age of 15, he received training in Newport Beach, California, from a retired Disney animator. He then entered the animation industry, working for a variety of studios, including Disney
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
, Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
and Filmation
Filmation
Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live action programming for television during the latter half of the 20th century. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1963...
.
In 1985, he moved to New York, doing comic book work for Marvel and DC Comics, while studying at New York's Art Students League. A phone call from John Kricfalusi
John Kricfalusi
Michael John Kricfalusi , better known as John K., is a Canadian animator. He is creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, its adults-only spin-off Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", The Ripping Friends animated series, and Weekend Pussy Hunt, which was billed as "the world's first interactive web-based...
sent him back West in the early 1990s to work on The Ren & Stimpy Show, Samurai Jack
Samurai Jack
Samurai Jack is an American animated television series created by animator Genndy Tartakovsky that aired on both Cartoon Network and Toonami from 2001 to 2004. It is noted for its highly detailed, outline-free, masking-based animation, as well as for its cinematic style and pacing...
, The Mighty B!
The Mighty B!
The Mighty B! is an American animated television series co-created by Amy Poehler, Cynthia True and Erik Wiese for Nickelodeon. The series centers on Bessie Higgenbottom, an ambitious Honeybee girlscout that believes she will become a superhero called the Mighty B if she collects every Honeybee badge...
and other shows. His long-run "Monroe" series appeared in more than 100 issues of Mad, and he has also co-created Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
Hellboy Junior
Hellboy Junior
Hellboy Junior is a Dark Horse Comics Halloween one-shot and two-issue comic book mini-series by Bill Wray and Mike Mignola that features a younger version of the fictional character Hellboy.-Halloween Special:...
with Mike Mignola
Mike Mignola
Michael Joseph "Mike" Mignola is an American comic book artist and writer who created the comic book series Hellboy for Dark Horse Comics. He has worked for animation projects such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire and the adaptation of his one shot comic book, The Amazing Screw-On Head.-Career:Mignola...
based on the Hellboy
Hellboy
Hellboy is a comic book superhero created by writer-artist Mike Mignola. The character first appeared in San Diego Comic-Con Comics #2 , and has since appeared in various eponymous miniseries, one-shots and intercompany crossovers...
character. His cartoon influences include Hank Ketcham
Hank Ketcham
Henry King "Hank" Ketcham was an American cartoonist who created the Dennis the Menace comic strip, writing and drawing it from 1951 to 1994, when he retired from drawing the daily page and took up painting full time in his studio at his home. He received the Reuben Award for the strip in 1953...
, Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...
, Erich Sokol and Wally Wood
Wally Wood
Wallace Allan Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work in EC Comics and Mad. He was one of Mads founding cartoonists in 1952. Although much of his early professional artwork is signed Wallace Wood, he became known as Wally Wood, a name he...
.
Art director for StoryCorps animated shorts.
California regionalist paintings
A resident of Sierra Madre, CaliforniaSierra Madre, California
The city of Sierra Madre is a municipality in Los Angeles County, California whose population was 10,917 at the 2010 census, up from 10,580 at the time of the 2000 census. The city is located in the Foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains below the southern edge of the Angeles National Forest. ...
, 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.
Edgar Alwin Payne
Edgar Alwin Payne was an American Western landscape painter and muralist.-Early life:Payne was born in Washburn, Barry County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks. Washburn is in southwest Missouri, only nine miles from the Arkansas border. But that wouldn’t stop this turn-of-the-century Missouri...
, Emil Gruppe
Emil Gruppe
Emile Albert Gruppé was an American painter born in Rochester, New York to Helen and Charles P. Gruppe. He lived the early years of his life in the Netherlands as his father Charles Paul Gruppe, painted with the Hague school of art and acted as a dealer for the Dutch painters in the US...
, J. C. Leyendecker
J. C. Leyendecker
Joseph Christian Leyendecker was one of the pre-eminent American illustrators of the early 20th century. He is best known for his poster, book and advertising illustrations, the trade character known as The Arrow Collar Man, and his numerous covers for The Saturday Evening Post. Between 1896 and...
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.
Galleries
He is represented by several California galleries: Segil Fine Art (Monrovia), H. J. Higgins (Los Angeles), The Vault (Senora) and Just Looking Gallery (San Luis Obispo).Book
Wray's book, Dirty Beauty, a 48-page, full-color hardcover collection of his paintings was published September 17, 2007 by Brandstudio Press.Awards
- 2005: First prize winner in Art Interview - International Online Artist CompetitionArt Interview - International Online Artist CompetitionThe Art Interview - International Online Artist Competition is a quarterly international art award.Since its inception in 2004, the award has been given to many emerging artists who have become known to the general public for the first time...
. - 2005: Second place: 1st Annual 2005 Riverside Plein Air Paint-out
- 2006: Artist Choice Award at the SLO Painting Festival