WiL Vélez is a New Orleans-based, self-taught painter and multidisciplinary artist.

He was born in 1989, in Pearl River, MS, where he spent most of his formative childhood years honing his skills in drawing and painting. His earliest subjects were the plants and trees, wild and farm animals of the surrounding rural South Mississippi setting. Over the years his style has become increasingly versatile, developing to embrace abstraction and depict scenes directly inspired by dreams, nightmares, and personal life experiences. 

Since 2009, Vélez has been an active member of arts communities across the Gulf South. In 2020 his art history obsession led to a degree which was then followed by a barrage of professional work experience to include fine art conservation, curating, framing, creative marketing, web design and photography. As of May 2024, he has returned, full-time, to his foremost passion, painting. 

Now experimenting with the fluidity of water-based stains, Vélez often combines the medium with acrylics and sometimes inks to create expressive strokes that manifest city skylines and aerial Martian landscapes, dancing microorganisms, and uncanny dreamscapes. 

His latest series, Winged Rivers, blends aerial views of Southern Louisiana’s rivers with abstracted wing patterns inspired by native butterfly species.