Sierra Madre Artist Presented Urban Landscape Award

Included in the 100^th Annual California Art Club (CAC) Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, William Wray’s Rex received the Urban Landscape Award from art ltd. Magazine. It was presented to him at the Exhibition opening on Saturday, April 2, which was held at Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Wray says he found the subject for Rex, an old cement plant, in an industrial part of Vernon. 

“I hopped over a fence and walked around, took photographs, and when I came back to my Sierra Madre studio I extrapolated on that photography. My art is abstract; I am not a ‘renderer’ of realistic paintings," Wray said.

“If Thomas Kincaid is the painter of light, I'm the painter of blight," he added. "Whether it's an old trailer park, train engine or sun bleached factory, my subjects are inevitably bound to be demoed, towed to the junkyard . . . I find the beauty in the places more people consider ugly.”  

Peter Fehler, publisher of art ltd., a magazine covering the dynamic art scene of the Western United States, says the publication has been presenting the Urban Landscape Award to CAC artists for many years. Because the magazine’s focus is on contemporary art, the award honors urban landscape painters, as opposed to traditional California landscapes.

Wray’s artwork was chosen for the award by Fehler and a team of editorial staff members. They reviewed images of  submissions to the 2011 CAC exhibition that fit their criteria, and Rex was the painting that most “resonated” with them.

Wray was in another part of the museum when the awards were being announced, he said. “I heard my name, and when I walked into the room people were cheering and congratulating me. It felt great to be recognized, especially because urban landscapes are sort of my specialty.”

Wray has lived in California most of his life. He studied painting at the Art Students League in New York. Making his living as a cartoonist who specialized in painted subjects, he spent many years blending an eclectic array of art styles, ultimately finding his voice in a contemporized reflection of traditional California regional painting that focus on humble subject matter rarely considered as fine art.

He blends traditional skill sets of realism and the sheer energy of abstract expressionism in an ongoing evolution to find the balance between two seemingly unrelated styles. Wray has challenged himself to create a brand of realistic expressionism to use as a bridge into the customarily circumspect contemporary art world.