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 William Monje was born in 1937 and has been a professional artist all of his life. He attended the Arizona School of Art in the mid-fifties where he was a student of the master portrait painter Jo Rogozon. William began professionally in the late fifties by painting portraits and illustrating commercially, but soon discovered his career in scenic art and set design for the stage in Phoenix, Arizona. Despite the size of his paintings as a fine artist, he has painted backdrops as large as 22 by 56 feet. In Phoenix he was art director for the Arizona State Fairgrounds from 1960 through 1970 where he also designed numerous commercial displays. During that same period he also served as set designer and/or technical director and/or scenic artist for several community theatres and organizations including The Phoenix Little Theatre, The Arizona Repertory Theatre, The Phoenix Musical Theatre, The Scottsdale Players, and The Sombrero Playhouse.
In 1971 William moved to Los Angeles, mostly to pursue a career as a fine artist, most specifically erotic art, but also pursuing writing. He worked for what were then called “underground newspapers,” beginning as an illustrator, but eventually writing and even editing. While continuing to work as a set designer and scenic artist, expanding some into TV and movies, he soon discovered his fine art was well received at art fairs and street shows; ultimately that is how he made his living for the last two decades of his career. Over the course of that period he has sold his work to private collectors and dealers from all over the country, in Europe, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and South America.
In the mid-to-late eighties, due to arthritis and other disabling maladies, he ceased doing art fairs, made some private sales from his home, and eventually pretty much retired from producing and selling his artwork. For a period he turned instead to his other talent of writing, publishing e-book novels and becoming a produced playwright. After an extended period of inactivity and increasing illness, however, he had a near fatal heart attack.
After forty-five days in intensive care, barely hanging onto life, kept alive by a device that kept his heart beating in spite of its virtually destroyed condition, he received a heart transplant. Now, over a year later, having found, quite literally, a new lease on life, and having dropped a few bad habits, such as chain smoking, William has come out of retirement to market his artwork online. He is also pursuing sculpting and will soon have several pieces in bronze to be presented as limited editions. |
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