Information taken from an article by Norman Kolpas, “William Hook, A World Apart” in Southwest Art magazine: Born in 1948, Hook grew up in Kansas. “Art was one of those innate things,” he says, which was nurtured by his family and recognized early on by his teachers. He received a BFA in 1970 from the University of New Mexico and an MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He became the Creative Director and a partner in one of the large ad agencies, Broyles, Allebaugh, and Davis. He gradually rediscovered his love of painting and eventually devoted himself to it full time. “I have painted all over the United States and Europe and continue to find New Mexico at the center of my work . . . We artists who paint here in New Mexico become historians . . . these little old towns preserve an entirely different culture that hasn’t really changed. They’re probably the closest in the United States to feeling like you’re in another country.” Continually refining his technique, Hook does most of his work painting with his favorite style of brush, a #12 “bright”. “It’s the brushwork that separates the boys from the men,” he chuckles,” I would like to be like John Singer Sargent in his brevity and economy of brushwork to do with one stroke what might otherwise take 10 strokes or even a day. No matter what you do, there’s never a substitute for craftsmanship.”
