EDUCATION

Bill Reidy is a visual artist originally from St. Louis, Missouri. His passion for art began at an early age, leading him to study fine art at Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned his BFA. After graduation, he moved to Philadelphia to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest art school in the United States, where he received his MFA.

     At PAFA, Reidy was immersed in a tradition rooted in French Academic methods—drawing and painting grounded in close observation of the visible world. While this approach initially resonated with him, he soon found himself drawn to a deeper, older lineage: the synthetic, invented draftsmanship of the Old Masters. Rather than merely copying what they saw, these artists constructed their worlds through intuitive understanding—controlling form, gesture, and light with extraordinary freedom and intent.

     This shift in focus aligned naturally with Reidy’s long-standing interest in 3D modeling and world-building. The intersection of Old Master sensibilities with contemporary digital tools opened up new possibilities for his work. Today, he explores the human figure and its expressive potential through a process that blends kinesthetic intuition with the structured invention of form and light. His work is a conversation between centuries—reviving classical visual thinking within the context of present-day image-making technologies.

     Reidy now lives and works in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, where he continues to pursue this difficult but deeply rewarding manner of image-making. He views the effort to resurrect Renaissance visual language for a contemporary audience as a kind of artistic moonshot—ambitious, exacting, and profoundly worth the challenge.