The Art Of Maria J. William - about the artist

I was born in 1974 in the city of Lviv, located in western Ukraine. My childhood was spent in a unique mixture of beauty and squalor, among magnificent 700-year-old western European architecture surrounded by clusters of ugly Soviet-era structures, poor little villages, sprawling construction sites, and untamed forests. From the time I was old enough to string together a line of coherent thought, I knew I did not like where I was. Always lacking a sense of belonging, I escaped from the drab reality of the communist era the only way I knew how - by immersing myself into art.

Thankfully, art was never a subject of deficit in my life. My parents split when I was barely a year old, and I was raised by a single mother who was an actress and a drama teacher. I pretty much grew up on stage, which eventually caused me to develop an intense dislike of the theater, and a passion for all other forms of art, especially visual arts and music. If I wasn't a die-hard skeptic, I would say that becoming an artist was always my destiny.

I've been drawing from the moment I learned how to hold a pencil, as trite as it sounds. I was never serious about it, or good at it; I did it because it was the only sure way for me to escape the dark, hopeless reality that surrounded me. Even though I excelled at a number of other extracurricular activities, I never liked any of those things as much as I liked drawing. Despite my love of art, I had never received any official art training, and had never considered the career of an artist while growing up. Rigid censorship and artistic poverty of the communist era forced me to contemplate more lucrative and practical career paths. I studied classical piano from the time I was four years old, and according to my teachers was good enough to become the Next Big Thing in the world of music. For the longest time, I went along with the adults' assumption that I would become a professional pianist. However, as much as I loved music, I soon realized that I could only imagine it as a hobby. When I was fifteen, I exchanged my piano for a cheap acoustic guitar, my Mozart sheet music for a bootlegged book of Beatles songs, and my girly school uniform for faded blue jeans and "I love U.S.A." t-shirts. Eventually, I also exchanged my young-pioneer idealism for the bitter cynicism of a lost generation.

Upon graduating high school, I decided to combine my love of writing and my near-fluency in English by becoming an international journalist. Unfortunately, journalism ended up being one of the worst disappointments of my life. I dropped out in my second year of college, and joined the grossly underpaid teenage wokforce. After the communist block had fallen apart, the country was overtaken by grave deficit, staggering lawlessness and rabid nationalism. Suddenly, my family found ourselves an ethnic minority, underprivileged and discriminated against. My late teens were spent in a crumbling apartment building that was severely underheated in the winter, and boiling hot in the summer; where dirty water ran for only a few hours every week, power outages were weekly occurence, and the fridge was almost always nearly empty. Whenever I wasn't cooped up inside appeasing my many muses, I had no choice but pretend to be someone I was not, because the only alternative was to be blatantly persecuted.

Things changed swiftly and forever for me in the summer of 1994, when I was faced with an unexpected set of circumstances otherwise known as The Twist Of Fate, and found myself transported over the Atlantic Ocean and into a crazy little place called New York City, where I've been living ever since. From the moment I had first set foot on the American soil, I knew I had finally found a place where I belonged. Coming here did not feel like entering a new world; rather like returning home after a years-long exile.

It was only here that I began to seriously ponder the career of a professional artist. Fate, it seems, finally caught up with me in 1995, when I began accepting freelance art assignments part-time while working as a proofreader during the day. In 2000, I decided to quit my day job for good in lieu of being a full-time artist. I've been working as an artist ever since, creating private commissioned work for corporate clients and private collections. I am also a regular exhibitor at various fantasy and sci-fi conventions throughout the U.S.

Even though I have taken a number of life drawing classes, I remain for the most part a self-taught artist. I draw inspiration from many things - Asian cultures, mythology, anime, fantasy art, Art Nouveau, Pre-Raphaelites. Though my art was predominantly fantasy in the beginning, over the years I have found myself drifting away from traditional fantasy subjects such as fairies and dragons, and towards things that are more borderline. After trying my hand at many different styles and subjects, from still lives to landscapes to stylized illustration, I learned that creating portraits is what I enjoy most. Nothing is more compelling or intriguing to me than a human face. Every expression tells a story; every fleeting look is a wealth of memory and emotion. That said, I'm also an experimentation junkie. I'd be bored with just one style and just one medium. I often mix styles, sometimes combining realistic figures with crisp outlines or stylized backgrounds. I use a wide variety of traditional mediums in my work, such as graphite, oils, gouache, watercolors, inks, and colored pencils. Having finally tried my hand at digital art, I am now happy to have this marvelous tool at my disposal, even though 90% of my work is still traditional. Often my pieces are a wild concoction of most of the above. I may seem unusual in the artistic sense: I don't keep a sketchbook, don't do a lot of pre-work such as roughs or color studies, and don't ever rework my pieces. A lot of that sort of preparation usually goes on the non-physically-existent canvas of my mind.

I currently live in a picturesque seaside part of Brooklyn, New York, with my husband of 13 years Chris, and our two children, James (6) and Oliver (2). I consider myself a New-Yorker at heart and cannot imagine being anywhere else. My free time (which isn't much), is occupied by writing, music, movies, photography, reading, and videogames. Not necessarily in that order. If the above dissertation wasn't enough for you and you want to know more about me, please feel free to check out the FAQ.