November/December featured artist in the James Keefe Gallery is W.B. Allen (Bill). Bill was born in Monmouth, Illinois and attended Monmouth College as a Biology major. While there, he took several oil painting classes from Harlow Blum to satisfy the “Arts” in his “Bachelors of Arts” degree. Coincidentally, Blum was the presenter for the Arts in the Schools program when he was in grade school. As he pursued his career in biological research and raised a family, Bill painted regularly. In 2017, the corporation for which he had worked for more than 20 years decided to offer him, “the chance to seek new opportunities.” He started to paint again with hopes of selling the occasional painting. However, he soon found that social media was a much more powerful marketing tool than he anticipated, and he started having trouble keeping paintings in stock. Bill now lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
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