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Bill Gaither began showing an interest in both art and wildlife at an early age. His father, R.C.
Gaither of Ludlow, KY, was an avid outdoorsman and consummate angler. It was he who
introduced Bill to the outdoors, and his infinite patience that allowed him to pass on much lore to
the young artist.

Bill began taking art lessons at the urging of his mother, and by age eleven was attending adult
classes. At age twelve he began to display an interest in taxidermy and pursued it with such
force that by the time he as fourteen, he was mounting fish and birds for the sportsmen in his
home town of Ludlow, KY.

Bill entered the world of wildlife art with a series of lithographs produced by ECHO Publications
in Amelia, OH. While with the company, he published more than one hundred lithographs of
song and game birds and a variety of exotic and endangered species. One of the works from that
era is on the letterhead of the Ruffed Grouse Society. The last series done for ECHO was the
fifty state birds of America.

Following his time under contract with ECHO, Bill produced more than a dozen hand
watercolored draughting prints, more than twenty lithos and a six painting series for a Canadian
Business which were lithographed. He then began producing Whiskey decanters for the bourbon
industry, to include the famous Wild Turkey Lore series and other pieces for Ski Country
Bourbon, Old Bardstown Bourbon and other distilleries. The decanter business introduced the
young Kentuckian to K.K. Maruri Shokai of Seto, Japan, through their factory facility at Piedras
Negras, Mexico.

Bill began producing limited edition porcelain with Maruri and together they formed the famous
Maruri USA Corporation to produce fine limited edition and collectable porcelain figurines.
During his tenure as Chief of Design for Maruri, Bill designed, sculpted and produced the largest
homogenous, hard-paste porcelain wildlife sculpture ever made in the USA. The work, a life
sized pair of canada geese, sold for $20,000.00 each in 1982. A capital sum for a porcelain
sculpture at that time. The African collection for Safari Club Internationals SCICF was
completed at the Earlanger Studios of Gaither and Maruri in Kentucky.

Leaving Maruri at the end of 1986, Gaither began to paint again in ernest and to experiment with
co-polymer resins. Never satisfied with the routine, he accomplished a line of wildlife jewelery
for the prestigious firm of JBJ in Houston, TX. He then began a promotional fishing tour with
Sea Ray Boat Company while he continued his experiments in new media. During the 1990's a
new resin base was developed which gave this artist the freedom of space required by his new
designs. And now, as we begin a new millineum, once again, this iron horse of the wildlife art
world is preparing to release a new series of both print and sculpture during the Fall of 2001.