Maria J. William
Maria William was born 29 years ago and was raised in Eastern Europe. She's been drawing from the moment she learned how to hold a pencil. There were many other creative things she did as a child, but even though she'd excelled at a few, she never liked any of those things as much as she loved drawing.
She had never considered being an artist while growing up - she had not had any official training, and the genre of fantasy had not come into her life until she was about 14 years old. But fate, it seems, finally caught up with her. In 1995, when she was approached by a gaming company to create a concept portrait for their upcoming RPG, her career as a freelance artist officially began. Since then, she's done cover and interior artwork for many clients including Five Star Publishing, Vesper Star Productions, Pinwheel Games, Inc., Sister City Productions, and others. A large chunk of her work is also comprised of creating portraiture for private clients, as well as story illustrations for aspiring writers.
Maria prefers to call herself a craftsman, rather than an illustrator or an artist. She doesn’t merely collect paychecks for her work, and neither does she constantly do the bidding to her ever-hungry muse. She’s somewhat in the middle. Technically, her art is fantasy portraiture. It hovers somewhere on the brink between realism, surrealism and eroticism, with heavy influences from a number of modern fantasy artists, mythology, Art Nouveau and Pre-Raphaelites. She creates most of her artwork using oils, colored pencils, graphite, or watercolor, but she loves to constantly experiment and try out new mediums and styles.
She currently lives in New York City with her husband of nine years, Chris; their two-year-old son, James; and cat, Pandora. Her free time (when she can find any) is filled with lots of books, music, and computer games.
