Donald Roller Wilson 

  A resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Donald Roller Wilson is a painter who describes his work as a "by-product of his thoughts." According to him, he spends his "days and nights pondering the meaning of life, the state of the universe, and the Home Shopping Network. . . .More than anything, my work deals with pointlessness. It takes all the arrogance out of everything you do when you know that god is so much bigger than you are. And yet everything you are and do and see is filled with god: the grass, the asphalt, and the people fighting over Aqua net at Wal-Mart. . . .You can make a profound intellectual statement just by basing your efforts on silliness."

His canvases, painted in lush colors in realist style, are inhabited by animals, many of them monkeys, florals, children, and also floating objects such as olives, cigarette butts, pickles, and melon wedges that he attributes, not to a surrealist style, but to a "strong night wind that whips through and causes things to happen."

In the late 1960s, he taught at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and has remained in that town ever since. He is regarded as a local celebrity, and his home and studio are on the local map of "famous residences."