Excellence in Arts
William Strickland
Selma artist has creative influence all over Johnston County By Randy Capps
It’s humbling for an artist to see his or her work be recognized, and the fact that William Strickland already has his artistic fingerprints all over Johnston County didn’t dampen his enthusiasm when he was told that he’d be receiving the 2020 Johnston Now Honors Excellence in Arts award. “When I found out about this, it really meant a lot to me,” he said. “Because I work by myself, I’m never going to get real estate agent of the year for a company or whatever. I’m always in paint clothes. Sometimes, people treat you a little differently and you feel a little differently. So, to get this, I felt like was a whisper that I’m doing the right thing. That’s why it’s exciting.” As is the case with most creative people, Strickland’s spark showed up early. “Ever since I was little, I’ve painted and 8 | JOHNSTON NOW
drawn,” he said. “My mother had a florist in Elm City and early on I helped out and played with spray paint and Styrofoam and had a lot of creative freedom. After high school at Fike in Wilson, I went to East Carolina for two years. I was in the art school and I loved it. My parents had divorced, and I was out of money sending myself. So, I went to Raleigh for the summer to make money.” It was during that time when he got his break. “A friend opened up a business in a strip mall,” Strickland said. “About 2,500 square feet of vanilla walls and needed me to paint vignettes. He said, ‘Do you know how to marbleize?’ And I didn’t even know what it was. He said, ‘I have a book.’ So, I started doing that. I was actually waiting tables at IHOP and Darryl’s Restaurant in Raleigh at the time. When it opened, people started asking
for work to be done. So, it kind of just happened by accident.” Even though it was a very different place in the 1980s than it is now, it still served to broaden his artistic horizons. “It was fun because I was working with all types of different people,” he said. “People that had moved to the state that were more modern and contemporary. Being from the Elm City area, people were pretty traditional. So it was nice to work with people from different parts of the country that had different palettes. “The more I do, I keep learning. ... I’m a little bit of an odd mix between an artist and a designer.” That mixture, with a dose of faith tossed in for good measure, shows up in his work.
