Will is an engraver with the Department of Treasury and can be as precise as that exacting craft can demand-you have seen his handiwork on stamps and currency. That carries over to the incredible and increasingly rare quality of prints he does in his Capitol Hill studio with a 150 year old printing press-itself a work of art. His engravings are, fittingly, of the Rhinelandish, or Dutch, style rather than Italian, and he loves to engrave tiny emblems and portraits of houses. His creations include book plates for Smithsonian exhibits and Oprah’s personal seal and bookplates.

But that’s just the beginning. He does figurative life drawing at the Capitol Hill Art League, and paints portraits and landscapes. It is all done very much in traditional styles. He loves the detail, lighting and drama of Baroque art, yet can still reach for the contemplative stillness and dignity of earlier classical periods. Wil graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1983 but has been an artist since birth. It’s a way of seeing, and a matter of passion: capturing the visual splendor of everything around us – the visual splendor that is us – reflecting it in ways that no mirror could. (Excerpted from The Hill Rag April 2010, Jim Magner)