Posts Tagged ‘R.Y. McWilliams’

Carmine Magazine: What drives you to create? Also, what inspires you and your work?
R. Y. McWilliams: I am driven by a burning sensation in my stomach and a little voice screaming in my brain. Creating art makes them stop. I am inspired by a combination of the beauty of nature and the decay of man made things. Old buildings, obsolete broken down machinery, junkyards full of rusty cars and rotting shipwrecks inspire me just as much as walking through the forest in the spring or gazing upon the full moon.
I am also drawn to images of war, rioting and other insane human behavior.
I don’t necessarily seek to recreate these things in my art, but they compose much of the alternate universe that my art lives in.

CM: Were you formally trained in art or self taught? Do you think it has helped you or hindered you?
RYMW: I am 99% self taught. I have taken a few classes, but nothing on a regular basis. I feel lucky that there is a great museum district in Philadelphia. Besides the big art museum, there’s the Rodin Museum, the Franklin Institute and the Academy of Natural Sciences. There’s also the Mutter Museum which is a collection of medical oddities and dozens of skeletons and brains in jars and the like. So I have been able to soak all of this in as part of my self education process.
I think that being self taught helps in the sense that I feel like my style is pretty unique and I don’t feel bound by any rules or conventions. Sometimes I make horrible, amatureish mistakes that turn into something unexpectedly cool. And sometimes it hurts when it comes to certain techniques or materials or tools that I’m not aware of that could really push my art to a higher level.
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