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 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.

“I’m also a Christian,” he said. “I take a lot of humble pride in pleasing people and making them happy. My hidden talent is that I can walk into a house and sense if someone’s happy. I can walk into a house and see if time has stopped. I can quickly tell if there’s been financial trouble, health issues, a divorce or unhappiness. So, I try to work for everybody. If I’m working for a castle, I try to make that castle beautiful. If I’m working for a log cabin, I make it rustic and charming. That part of what I do is quite wonderful.”

His journey hasn’t been without sadness, however, as he watched his partner of 18 years fight a cancer diagnosis.

“That changed my life completely,” he said. I kind of looked at things differently and felt like design has a lot of value in making people’s homes therapeutic to them.” That perspective proved invaluable when he did design work for the SECU Hospice House at Johnston Health.

“Because of Donald’s situation, I had been in the hospital a lot,” he said. “Different hospitals, waiting rooms, staying overnight. So, I kind of knew what patients wanted. I knew they wanted to be more at home. The hospice job that I got was a little bit of grace, because I was in grief at the time. I was working in a place where people were going through transitions, and I kind of knew what they wanted and what they needed. They wanted to be at home, so I tried to make the hospice house a little bit like a fictional grandmother’s house that you would go to.”

If you’ve ever spent any time at Dewayne’s, you’ve seen some more of Strickland’s vision come to life.

“They were doing the women’s boutique,” he said. “What’s so funny is that I’m not really into fashion, but most of my clients have been women and I kind of understand what women like. So I decided to do dogwoods against black and to do it kind of southern. That led to more and more. Dewayne and Tina (Lee) are really good friends of mine. I think a lot of them, and they give me a lot freedom. (They have) a lot of faith in me.”

His advice to aspiring artists is simple: Share your passion.

“Artist is the only profession they put starving in front of,” he said. “So, that is one thing. The other thing is I feel like writers, artists, dancers, they’re given a gift. When I meet young people, (I tell them) if it’s your passion, that’s where you’re going to find the most happiness. If you really are an artist, and you really are creative, you have to listen to that inner voice. When you have a gift, I think you have to share it, somehow, some way.”