Throughout his successful, 30-plus-year career in broadcasting, w.e. pugh never lost his love of art. All the time he was running those radio stations, he continued to experiment in various media, including watercolor, oil, screen printing, acrylic and sculpture. His work has sold privately to collectors across the country.

In 2004, w.e. committed full time to painting. As a child — under his grandmother’s influence — he took art classes at the Zanesville Art Institute in his Ohio hometown, which set the stage for his dream of be coming an artist. Pugh entered formal art training at Defiance College in 1972 and a year later was accepted to the Central Academy of Commercial Design. He transferred to the University of Dayton and majored in Performing and Visual Arts.

At Dayton, he discovered radio. Starting as an on-air DJ for the campus radio station WVUD, pugh quickly became a sought-out national talent and was soon hired full-time in Columbus, Ohio. Over the course of his broadcasting career, pugh evolved from an on-air talent to a program director and leader in America’s largest radio markets.

Now, however, pugh has left radio to live full-time in the world of art. His focus has been abstract compositions in acrylics, but he continues to experiment, grow and evolve, both as an artist and human being. Pugh lives in Georgia with his wife, Laura.

— Joel Selvin

artist’s statement

I’m a painter and printmaker. My medium is acrylic paint, ink, paper, and canvas. I appreciate and relate to the different disciplines. I enjoy figurative, realism, representational but work primarily in abstract. I also understand and appreciate the politics of the brush stoke but I’m more interested in the mark making, autographical marks that are personal.

I find that the hard edge in my printing gives me a lane in my paintings. Printmaking helped me become a more disciplined painter without losing the texture, color and a loose line that are very much a part of my overall process.

Influences are wide and varied. I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s so at a very visual time. I was a very visual consumer. I still lean on artists that I’m drawn to. Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Mitchell, Thiebaud, Frankenthaler, Haring, Lichtenstein, Krasnow to name a few. And everybody that I’ve admired over the years.

— w.e. pugh