Devil Drawing
1985-1995

BIOGRAPHY

Bill Bruley was born in 1923 in Hermansville, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He is of French Canadian descent and attended school only through the third grade. As a young man he worked for a commercial fisherman before moving to Milwaukee to become a construction painter, specializing in high-altitude work on public buildings. After his retirement in the early 1980s, he moved to Pittsville, Wisconsin, and began transforming his small house and yard into a personal environment. Indoors, a lighthouse built with stones and mortar, heavy chains hanging from the ceiling, and a ship model carved from a cedar log gave expression to his lifelong interest in maritime subjects. The paintings on the walls were among almost fifty works, all rendered on round panels, which include repeated motifs of particular personal significance. One depicts a watery landscape and devils at play, apparently referring to a happy time in his childhood when he would skip school and play by the waters of a nearby slough. Nearly all of the work (painted and drawn on the backs of advertising posters from department stores) includes the initials CKC, standing for his nickname/pseudonym, Cheebee K. Cheebeezee, and Exzillda, the name of his aunt, which he includes for personal reasons. Bruley is married and has one son.

BOOKS

The End is Near! Roger Manley. Illustrated. Bio.