Artezolla

William Zolla (Artezolla) is an East Boston-based artist and illustrator who balances his artistic practice with a professional career in the life sciences. He constructs his imaginative subjects with a blueprint of magic and whimsy, but with building blocks of natural rationalist philosophy, and a realist approach inspired by the beauty of representational art and its creative recombination. 

At the same time, Zolla is fascinated by humanity’s impulse to mythologize: to transform natural phenomena, animals, places, geometry, and the unknown into symbols, monsters, gods, stories, and systems of meaning. His work draws from natural history, mythology, esoteric visual traditions, fantasy, and science fiction. He approaches these not as systems of belief, but as expressions of the ways people have sought to understand and give form to both the known and unknown aspects of nature, as well as the full spectrum of human psychological experience, from love and joy to fear and sorrow.

Working primarily in watercolor, drawing, and mixed media, Zolla uses the tension between the rational and the mythic as a framework for creatures, characters, and imagined worlds. His process begins with the observation of anatomy and natural forms before moving into speculation, distortion, and invention.