For the third installment of our contributor interviews, EIC Vasili talked with William Creel about the artistic process, the dichotomy between queerness and religion, and how he puts a modern spin on classical subjects and techniques.

TUR: How long have you lived in the Wilmington area?

WILLIAM: I’m very familiar with Wilmington. I have a bit of a unique history with it, because my family going back to my grandma is from Wilmington, but I just moved to Wilmington around 4 years ago. So relatively recent. I’d always visit when I was on vacation, so I had some familiarity, but it was distant in a sense. Now that I’ve settled down in Wilmington and gotten familiar with it, I’ve definitely found a lot of comfort in it and I do love the area. I got my Associate’s at Cape Fear and found a really amazing queer community there. That took a lot of searching, but it was worth it nevertheless.

TUR: How would you describe your experience living as a queer person in this community? How did you cultivate that community for yourself?

WILLIAM: It was a lot of trial and error. When I moved to Wilmington I was around a sophomore in high school, and I was also homeschooled, so I didn’t have many facets to make friends or meet new people. At first I felt very isolated—I’ve had that feeling, just growing up in the South; I used to live in Charlotte, so, not a lot of people like me. But when I entered school, through time, as I got more comfortable, I was able to break the ice with people and talk about things—like art—and get to know someone and open up to them about myself and my identity. That enabled me to physically express myself how I wanted to. Living in Wilmington and being queer—especially because on the outside I present myself as queer; I paint my nails, I have long hair—you kinda have to block it out in a sense, depending on where you’re at, because you do get stares and looks. But it’s all passive—the resistance you receive. I haven’t had many experiences where people have said something actively negative to me, but that’s because I try to be in a nice environment that allows me to be who I am.

TUR: How do you find yourself exploring that community most frequently? What groups are you a part of?

WILLIAM: I think honestly being an artist has helped me find people that are just on the outskirts and are different to begin with. A lot of people make art because they feel different, and they need an avenue of support. So even beyond gender and sexuality, I’ve found people that use art as a medium of self-expression for some unique ways. Art has always been my number one way to connect with people. But I love clubs—when I was at Cape Fear, the Pride Club was huge. Sometimes I like to go to music venues as well—places where I can find people with similar tastes as me—and that’s really helped me.

TUR: I think Wilmington is really up and coming as a music city, which I love as a huge concert person too.

Moving on, how would you say your identity as a queer person informs your artistry, if at all? What aspects of your experience and identity do you find yourself exploring in your work most often?

WILLIAM: I’ve thought about this a lot—because one way or another, my art is always going to be about my identity, whether I do it on purpose or it’s something kind of subconscious that bleeds into my work. There’s always that type of narrative behind it. A lot of my works pay homage to art history—I really adore the periods of art history that were so focused on religion, when religion was the reason to make art. And so I kind of like to mimic the styles of some of those painters like Caravaggio, who would have these beautiful paintings of religious stories. For me, I like to make a sort of contemporary twist, where it looks very theatrical and religious—people say sometimes my work looks like I’m painting the Holy Mary or something, and I use crosses and things like that—but I say it’s a contemporary twist because a lot of them are self-portraits, and I’m painting a queer man at heart. People don’t pick that up immediately; it’s more of a personal level for me—I’m painting something that’s intrinsically queer and flamboyant. In general, I love to utilize religious and Catholic imagery.

TUR: That was definitely something I noticed in the work you have up on your website. There’s a very clear occupation with  religious iconography—crosses, rosaries, veils that are very evocative of figures like the Virgin Mary, and so on. Where does that occupation come from?

WILLIAM: That dichotomy between queerness and religion was obvious to me because I was approaching it with the understanding that you’re a queer artist. I want to ask you more about that—what would you say you are really exploring or illustrating about the relationship between queerness and religion?

Other than just its ties to my identity—being in the South and being in that intrinsically religious and theistic environment—that’s all I saw when I was living down here. So I experienced this clash between what I was seeing and what I was feeling—with my identity, I knew I was different, especially when I was younger. When I grew older, I came to realize that different a bit more, and that materialized into my artwork and self-expression, and I want to paint that difference and see what it looks like for me. It’s like rebellious in nature—because those two things aren’t supposed to go together I suppose. And that’s something I want to explore more—compositions and narratives in my art that are specifically queer and gay, whether that’s just homoerotic stuff or imagery that’s important to gay culture, and adding religious themes more heavily. I have a passion for history and philosophy as well—my sister is a history major and we talk about a lot of queer culture together, and that informs my work too. So all these things kind of tie together into my narratives.

TUR: I like what you said about there being an inherent rebelliousness—almost like a reclamation of that religious iconography from a queer perspective. I think the piece you submitted, “Lilith,” captures that—that’s a self-portrait, and you’ve got this smirk on your face as you’re brandishing this cross and are draped in the religious robe. Even that, I think, is very gay—it’s tongue-in-cheek, and not the kind of emotion you would expect from a sort of dour, dark, religious composition.

WILLIAM: That piece is important to me—and I feel like I decided to submit that one specifically because it exemplifies what I want to work towards: it’s a self-portrait and it’s somewhat discrete but not discrete. It implements these things I love—like drapery and different fabrics—and I also like the elements of still life, like the bowl and the cross I’m holding up—because I knew that they would kind of bring to mind a certain type of image that you see in history, but giving them a unique twist.

TUR: I’d love to hear a bit about your process—when you sit down to paint something, what intention do you approach the craft with? You just mentioned that you wanted to paint those images because you wanted to paint them, but did you always envision it as a self-portrait? I’m interested to hear how an idea might evolve from the blank canvas to something finished.

WILLIAM: It really depends. My work that’s more representational—like a lot of the stuff that’s on my website that’s about the human figure—I’m typically taking reference photos beforehand, and that’s also where my other mediums kind of influence each other. I’m big into photography as well, so I use my experience with photography to create these compositions—especially if it’s a still life or a portrait, I want these compositions to be spot-on and perfect. You can’t always get that on the first try, especially on canvas, so photography helps me with that. When I start painting, I do like to mimic a lot of techniques that the old masters use—I use a thing called chiaroscuro, where I stain my canvas a burnt red color and go in with my darkest darks and lightest lights—and that’s where I get the high contrast looks in my paintings. I know I’m throwing a lot of, like, art jargon out—but I mention art history because it really does bleed into my process. With other paintings, though, it’s not as cut and dry. A lot of my paintings end up being reworked a lot. I’ll have something that takes me a couple months because I want to keep working on it and it doesn’t feel right—and I imagine that’s a similar feeling to your creative expression. But that’s typically how I go about my art—I draw a lot on my influences, like photography and other mediums.

TUR: So, on that note, what kind of art do you find yourself doing now? We’ve talked a lot about the role religion plays in your art—is that a subject that you’re still drawn to, or do you find yourself being pulled towards other subjects?

WILLIAM: Definitely. I’m at this moment right now where so many things are taking my attention. I’m inspired by a lot—beyond religion, I’m really inspired by philosophy and how I can express that onto a 2D substrate—in a 2D form. What does that look like? Also, I love fragrances and perfumery, which is a bit random, but I’m really interested in seeing how other senses can be insightful to my work as a painter. I listen to music all the time when I paint, but also like—smelling different things and how that can change my paintings. Recently, I’ve been working very figuratively—working from the figure, from life—and I have this big interest in anatomy. I kind of want to implement dance and vogue into some of my at—capturing the figure in these poses is fascinating to me, and I can call back to different queer experiences through that.

TUR: So, with your perspective as a local in mind, what do you think the queer community in Wilmington needs, or is missing right now? What do you think you need as a queer artist in this community?

WILLIAM: Honestly, most of my resources were through school—and this is why I'm so excited to be a part of The Underway Review, because this is an opportunity outside of school and outside of these institutions for locals to get involved and meet people. I like seeing opportunities like these and I want to see more—maybe opportunities that are specifically for queer individuals to talk and express themselves. It’s kind of rough because I had to be in Wilmington for a long while to find these spaces. And I agree with what you said earlier—Wilmington is blooming in a lot of ways, in a lot of these alternative communities—and I just hope to see that bloom farther.