Hello, I'm wmcreativeart.
Hello, I’m Bill Mathis, principal artist and owner of WM Creative Art - “Abstract Realism”. Please let me tell you about my story, how I began, and who / what inspires me. My first exposure and inspiration in the visual arts came after Mom and Dad had scraped enough money together to buy their first home in Shark River Hills neighborhood of Neptune Township on the Jersey Shore. Dad commuted daily to the city - left very early and got home just in time to sit down for dinner. One Christmas Mom surprised him with an oil painting set so that he would have a creative outlet. He took right to it and when I was six I watched as he recreated our decorated Christmas tree just as it looked and would always look like we decorated it. I was fascinated by the painting and how it could preserve an inspiration he had. We eventually moved to Dad’s hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona where I attended high school and university. My education was in mechanical engineering - so I guess you could say that my early years were very “left side” of the brain. But I became very attached to visual art while I was in college and in all the years that followed - it was always a connection that brought my imagination to life. So I had a sense that the “right side” of the brain was a big part of who I am. My "big Sis", Diane, began creating her own art in the mid 70s. While she was over 8 years older than me and married at a young age, we finally grew together at that time when she spent some time back in our home in Scottsdale. Diane worked in both representative and abstract art. A favorite of mine and a cherished possession named "Tree of Wisdom" is the only oil on canvas I have of her work. The first professional artist I ever knew, and a huge inspiration for my art, was Dick Phillips. He left a full time job in the mid 70s to pursue his passion and at the same time continue to provide for his wife and two girls. One of whom became my wife, and that enabled Dick and I to form a strong friendship. When I first met him his art was very intricate pen and ink drawings of various southwestern scenes. Over time his work evolved into representative watercolors, to abstract watercolors, to abstract acrylic pours like the piece shown here. He is an inspiration in many ways - not least of which is proof that creativity can embrace many forms and evolve with time. How did I get started with my creative work? Through a friend. Several years ago I made a friend while I was on the west coast for a conference related to a charity I served. Over time, I would share dozens and dozens of colorful images of nature I had photographed. But I never felt like I had any ability to create any other forms of art. My friend urged me forward. Today, I follow artists and try to meet as many as I can either in person or virtually. I've discovered genres and variations in techniques and color palettes that I experiment with in search of my own styles, methods, and creations. This is an ongoing passion of mine. I hope you'll see this reflected in both the range of ways I express my art as well as how it has and will continue to evolve with time and what I learn. In the future I am planning to expand the scale of my work in both size and color dynamics. Two artists (among too many to name here) inspiring this evolution include: swarez.co.uk and johnbeckley.com. What inspires my art? Put simply - the Universe of what we can see, that which is too far and too vast to see, and things that are too small or uncertain to see. It amazed and inspired me to realize that what was very abstract in appearance was actually something as real as the clouds of Jupiter, or millions of stars like that which rises in the east every morning to warm our world and grow all that lives, or the magnified look of our skin cells, or even the molecules which comprise what we are or what we eat. Hence the tagline for my studio and artwork: "Abstract Realism"