Bill Renzulli spent his first career as a medical doctor for 30 years who developed an interest in art. Now a renowned, award-winning artist in many mediums, Renzulli is getting ready to celebrate the 7th anniversary of his Gallery 5 in Lower Town, which along with his beloved wife Patience, an author and registered nurse, and their many Whippets, makes them two of the first people to call Lower Town home, when they moved there in 2002

Bill, thanks for taking the time to do this interview.
Renzulli: No problem, I am happy to.

Where are you from?
Renzulli: I was born and raised in New Jersey in a small rural community settled by Italian immigrants; in fact my parents were first generation Italian Americans. I lived there until I went away to college to a small school in eastern Pennsylvania, called Lebanon Valley College. After that, I went to medical school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. After medical school, I moved around a little bit with internships, and my residency and time the Navy, I’ve lived in North Carolina, Wilmington, Delaware where I had a practice in internal medicine and primary care. And eventually Patience and I settled in a small farm in Maryland.

A doctor and his wife living on a Farm?
Yes, I had my practice in Wilmington for about 10 years and I gave it up to do art, and when we moved to the farm in Pennsylvania, Patience was, and still is an accomplished equestrian. And she did a lot of 3-day events and we had horses and ponies on our farm. I opened up a practice and did both it and my art there, until 2002 when we moved here, and I gave up medicine for good and just did art.

When did you first get interested in doing art?
Well I always liked to draw and paint, and I was the class artist in school, but it was never a consideration to do it as a career. I loved medicine, and everything about it. And after about four or five years of practicing I guess I had an early mid-life crisis. I was 35 went through this intense time and horrendous change, and at the end of it I decided I wanted to do art as much as I did medicine. At that point I began drawing and teaching myself to do art, and I began to realize I could work part time. And in 1981 I began pursuing it professionally along side practicing medicine.

So how did you come  to Paducah?
Well after going back into private practice, after about 5 years I was getting restless and I was wanting to have more time to paint. We were looking for somewhere that I could retire to and afford to do so that would enable me to making a living doing my art if I needed to do so. I saw an ad about the relocation program and we came here in 2001. We were the first artists from out of town to sign up for the relocation program when we bought the house, which had been gutted by fire, so we had to redo everything, and we built the gallery here. Which we were told at the time that it was the first new construction in LowerTown for 25 years. And in the fall of ‘ 02 we opened the gallery.

How did you come up with the name of the gallery, “Gallery 5?”
Before we came here I had been working in pastels and doing barns and buildings that were realistic but the backgrounds had all types of geometric shapes. And I have always liked the number 5, and I put one in the background of one of my paintings, and that painting was the first one I submitted to the Pastel Society of America for their juried show, and it got it, won an award, and sold, and after that my feet didn’t touch the ground for a month. It was just a tremendous time, and that was a couple years before I came here. And so for that reason I decided to call the gallery Gallery 5. I also have a 5 in every room of the house. We just love 5s.

So what types of work do you do, beyond pastels?
I work in a lot of different mediums but now primarily I am working with acrylics, but I have also recently done some small watercolor sketches. And you may have seen the big long paintings I have done of Broadway, and like I said I still do pastels.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?
I like landscapes so I do a lot of those. I like architecture as well. Two big influences on they way I paint now come from many trips cross-country and I have taken a lot of photographs, and so that’s where I get ideas. I was just fascinated by driving across the plains, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming. All of my painting have a horizon. The buildings I use are all real, I might place them differently than they were. The backgrounds I make up, or There are a lot of abstract artists here and for a while I thought I needed to be doing abstracts, but after a few years I feel like I have found my own style and I am really exploring that. And I tend to be a positive person and I think my paintings reflect that as well.

Looking back on the last 7 years, has it been everything you thought it would be when you came here?
Its more than I expected. The community, the neighborhood is amazing. Living among a community of artists is equally amazing. Paducah is so friendly and there is an intimacy here, and I really feel so connected to a place. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think I would be doing what I am doing now if I had stayed on the farm, and been so isolated. Its subjective but the influence of other artists, not so much in what or how they do it, but the attitudes toward their art and their mindsets have had an effect and I have no regrets about making the move whatsoever.

You are celebrating your time in Paducah with your “Seven years @ 5” show on November 13th? What can we expect from that show?
For me it is a celebration of my life as an artist over the past seven years. I have every invitiation from almost every show I have done either here at the gallery, locally, or a couple out of town. What I plan on having is a little bit of everything from every year. Including works from every year and every medium on display, both in the gallery and around the house. I will also have from new work available as well. Its going to be like a personal retrospective, it will be fun to see everything up. And if I can sell some paintings as well that will be even nicer.

For more information on Bill, and his art, please visit his website, by clicking here. Or to see our features about other artists in Paducah's Lower Town Arts District, click here

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