William B. MacGregor Jr. was born in Medfield MA in 1947 and he is the son and grandson of Norfolk Hunt Club kennel masters. Many of his family members were self taught artists, woodcarvers, automobile mechanics and veterans of foreign wars.
Bill is a graduate of Medfield High School, Northeastern University, Wentworth Institute and McIntosh College where he graduated as a member of Phi Theta Kappa. With no formal art training, he uses his mechanical engineering and drafting skills to produce artwork. His work is influenced by his passion for old cars, junkyards, nostalgia, the ocean, hiking and an engineering career which included working in military/aerospace companies, in civil engineering, in optics and as a drafting consultant for WCVB-TV Channel 5 in Boston. Bill recently retired as a Senior Engineer with Lockheed Martin.
One of Bill’s favorite paintings was of the USS Nantahala on which his father-in-law served in the Pacific during WW2 and later battled during the Korean & Viet-Nam war before she was retired in 1973. Bill has been commissioned by US Navy personnel to create paintings of their ships and he has painted such ships as the USS Stethem, USS Iwo Jima, USS Caron and USS Safeguard. He painted the USS Mitscher in a composite representing the historical Doolittle Raid. Bill has painted many RI lighthouses on nautical charts and has associated recently with the Plum Beach Lighthouse Association in RI.
Beginning in May, 2018, and for one year, four of Bill’s automotive related paintings are on display at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, MA. He is also known in the New England area as the Junkyard Artist for his junkyard art, T-shirts and nostalgic paintings. Bill’s painting begins with “old skool” mechanical and civil drafting techniques including the use of ruling pens, templates and Leroy. Then he inks his drawings and completes them with the application of watercolors and acrylics.
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