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After traveling around the world most of childhood as an Army brat until his family settled for good in the Costa Mesa / Newport Beach area, Bill Wray began working in the animation business as a teen-ager in the ’70s. Being mostly self-taught and shunning California’s conceptual-oriented art schools, he eventually enrolled in The Art Students League, New York, in the ’80s to reinforce his spotty art foundation. After deciding the fine art world was too conceptual for the kind of representational work he wanted to do, he went into commercial art.

Bill went on to work in animation and illustration, and writing and drawing comic books. He is well known for his painting style on the Ren and Stimpy Show, his monthly strip in Mad Magazine and his collaborations with Mike Mignola on Hellboy Jr.

Bill is currently concentrating hard on fine art oil painting centering in on urban landscape work. For the last two years Bill has been a member of LPAPA , Oil Painters of America and the California Art Club and has taking workshops for Ray Roberts, Carolyn Anderson, Matt Smith, Eric Merrill, Frank Serrano, George Strickland and long term study with Jove Wang.

He’s currently showing with Segil Fine Art in Monrovia, H.J. Higgins, In Downtown Los Angles, The Vault in Senora and Just Looking Gallery in San Louis Obispo. His most recent award is the artist choice award at the 2006 SLO painting Festival.

Bill resides in Sierra Madre, California with his significant other Sharon and his linguistically-gifted parrot Mooky.

I believe my biggest contribution to society is not having any children so I can do as many paintings as possible before I'm dead.