William D B Zwick

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, William’s first experience with art was watching mother, Val Brewer, as she painted landscapes in her small studio in his childhood home. Always interested in art, he attended a variety of art classes at the local collage, the Rhode Island School of Design.  Those courses included animation, figure drawing, and caricature, all of which he attended while in grammar school.

At thirteen William’s family moved to Oahu and he was enrolled in Punahou school. There he tried out various classes and workshops in the arts, learning techniques in sculpture, life drawing, film making and glassblowing. He returned to Rhode Island School of Design for a 5 week, in-residence summer art immersion program before entering his freshman year of high school. Between his Junior and senior year, he attended a 5-week summer art program in Spoleto, Italy in 2005.

In 2006 William enrolled at Laguna College of Art and Design, in California. The Florence Academy of Art accepted him during his Junior year as their first Laguna College of Art and Design shared credit student.  William returned to Laguna after his year abroad and became a student instructor in his senior year. He received a BFF, summa cum laude, in 2010, winning the Senior Painting award in the annual “Best of the Best” juried show.  In William’s senior year he also began selling works in the Laguna and began doing private portrait commissions.

William went back to Florence, Italy, to continue his studies at the Florence Academy of Art in the Fall of 2010. There he was awarded several teaching scholarships and had the honor of directing a figure drawing class in addition to working alongside other instructors teaching the students in the drawing program in 2011 and 2012. William also received the Florence Academy of Fine Art's “Best Painting” award in 2012, his graduating year.

In the summer of 2012 William returned to the island of Oahu and opened a fine art school, the Zwick Academy of Fine Art, (ZAFA) in downtown Honolulu. His school offers a wide variety of workshops that focus on providing classical training to the emerging artists of Hawaii. You can visit the school's website by clicking HERE.