We were lucky to catch up with William Reed recently and have shared our conversation below.

William, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

In 2011 I sold my small business and retired. I engaged in various volunteer projects around town but was kind of floundering around after retirement. A friend, knowing that I liked to draw, suggested that I enroll in a class at The Glassell School of Art in Houston. Glassell is the school associated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I started with the required intro to drawing and 2D Design and then I launched into painting. I was sold after my first painting class and knew that it is what I wanted to do with my retired future activities. I absolutely loved painting and I received adequate training and feedback from my instructors indicating that they also thought I could pull this off. Now, eleven years later, I have completed over 100 hours of instruction and have also completed Glassell’s two-year advanced Block Program. About four years ago I rented a studio at Silver Street Studios in Sawyer Yards and have been pursuing a second career as a professional artist. This has become my passion.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Let’s briefly go back to to when I was in high school: at that time I was enjoying art classes and also math and science classes. I had decided that I wanted to pursue a career as an Architect. I applied to and was was accepted to Rice University School of Architecture and also to Texas A&M School of Architecture. My father, who had been successful in business persuaded me at the last minute to instead go to business school with the goal of ultimately owning my own business. He thought that would be better for me long term. I did both of those things that he suggested. I ended up attending the University of Texas business school and a few years out of college I started and ran several small businesses. I think that my dad missed the point, however, in that this new direction denied me for the most part that creative outlet that so much interested me. During my business career I was able to express my creative side by doing much of our in-house advertising and promotions. I became self taught on the use of photoshop and Illustrator and used those tools extensively to help design promotional and advertising materials.

In 2011 I sold my small business and retired. I did volunteer work for a couple of years and then I enrolled in art classes at the Glassell School of Art in Houston. I completed over 100 hours of classwork their as well as attended their two-year advanced Block Program. I fell in love with creating art while at Glassell. I absolutely love painting. During my time at Glassell, I am most proud of being selected to receive the school’s 2D award for 2017. One person receives that award each year and that year it was given to me (wow what an honor and a surprise that was). The second biggest honor I received at the school was being selected to be one of a dozen students for the advanced Block Program for 2019 and 2020. My group of 12 artists still stay in touch with each other by Zoom every week. It was a fantastic program for emerging artists and I made some great new friends and artistic colleagues. I owe my skill and success to the Glassell School of Art and I would recommend them highly for anyone wanting to expand their artistic education.

Although I learned to paint with oils, I have since switched to acrylic painting because it lends itself better to my rapid gestural style of painting. I am a fast painter and acrylics just work better for me. My primary emphasis is narrative painting of figurative subjects (both people and animals). I love to tell stories with my art. As hard as I may occasionally try to paint a landscape of a still-life, they always turn out to have a narrative bent. I also like to incorporate humor in my work. I draw heavily on dreamlike images that I derive from both night dreaming and day dreaming. I believe that the unconscious mind is ripe with meaningful material for my work. We are all connected by the symbols and metaphors that appear routinely in our dreams.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I think many artists will agree with me that the goal of an artist is to express their own self and not to pursue work that doesn’t come from the heart. For example, I am a narrative painter and 90% of my work is about telling stories. I was told once by a valued instructor that I had to paint what I liked to paint and that 1. their is an audience for every type of work and 2. that that if you try to paint for a particular market you will not be successful. I think that was wise advice: even if I thought that painting abstracts was the hottest market and where all the money was, I just couldn’t couldn’t paint them as that is not who I am. You need to stick to what you do best and not try to fit in to anyone else’s idea of what you should be doing.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I don’t understand NFTs. I wish I did as I get a steady stream of people approaching me to buy my work as an NFT. I have even bought a book on the subject and I still don’t get it. I mean, I understand the idea of how it works but I think there must be a lot of con-men in the marketplace. When approached I usually just say that I don’t do NFTs. One fella offered me $3000 per work and when I told that to the next person that approached me, he said he would go $20,000 each. I am sorry but that just doesn’t pass the smell test to me. I hope that I don’t look back on this one day as a missed opportunity as those dollar amounts are extraordinary. If someone is reading this and thinks they can enlighten me, then please bring it on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.williamreedart.com/
• Instagram: wcreed_painter
• Facebook: William Reed, Artist

Image Credits
Stephen Kennedy, Photographer