About the Artist

Born on the rugged border between Texas and Mexico in 1948, in a place called Clint, William Arthur Herring was also born into an Artist's home. She, Jan Herring, was a firebrand, listed in Who's Who In World Art, the author of two books, and drop dead beautiful. She used her lips to kiss her son and told him he’d be an Artist one day. In this, the boy eventually found common ground with a famous American painter, Benjamin West. When asked why he had become an Artist, West just said, "Because of a kiss from my Mother."

Herring holds a degree from Texas A&M College in 1970 - International Relations and South American History. In 1968 he was asked to compete for the Olympic Games in small-bore rifle shooting. He declined. In that same year he began training in karate with some Koreans, an artform he maintains to this day. His paintings are found in such distinctive collections as those of former President Ronald Reagan, the actress Goldie Hawn, and beer baron Peter Coors. Nominated in 1993 by the Governor of Texas as a candidate for the Chairmanship of the National Endowment for the Arts, he remains a controversial supporter of beauty and bringing it back. He regards the modern art movement, and all the associated avant-garde messianic types, to be "pissy little juveniles" engaged in "nose-blowing contests." Among those, he lists such "junior-grade trailblazers" as Picasso, Matisse, and, of course, Chagall. Chagall loved to boast that he couldn't draw, and, naturally, he didn't. But Herring believes that if you can't draw, you can't paint. He has gone almost everywhere teaching that idea to any adept who would agree to train for it.

He has taught fashion illustration at Parson’s School of Design in New York. He has exhibited both with the American Watercolor Society and the National Academy of Design. In 1993 he was given the Board of Director's Award by the Pastel Society of America, was elected to signature membership, and then resigned in protest. (The secret art society, called Black Hats, is reputed to list him as a member.) The only Texan to ever be elected President of a mainline New York Art Society, he oversaw the disincorporation of the outfit in 1996, believing that "there is a special place in heaven reserved for anyone who helps get rid of an art organization on earth." (Knickerbocker Artists, New York).

All in all, Herring is a rebel who never stops. He is the author of a book that promptly sold out: The Wonderful Madness of Becoming a Horse of a Different Color, a primer on artistic rebellion.

Herring is married to his college sweetheart, Kay Konze of Brady, Texas. Together they raised four girls, each of whom was taught to mud-wrestle and take no lip.

New Year's Resolution:
"Add gunpowder to my pigment."