Now I am rethinking my life as I approach retirement. My life turned out better in the end. Winnie and I are surviving and doing well as a married couple….I am still living with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but I am able to cope well enough to get by and remain productive by creating artwork. I was very successful in art college. I graduated with a grade point average of 3.67, and I was off on my career. I worked as a mural painter with two companies, painting large. Then, in the spring of 1987, I was struck down with a lifelong disability. I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. One night in April of 1987, schizophrenia took over my mind.

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that affects the way a person feels, thinks, talks, and behaves. It alters perception. Symptoms usually appear between the ages of 15 and 30. I was 25 years old at the time. During that period, I took a seminar that changed my life. It taught me to establish goals and then make a habit of doing one small thing toward those goals every day. Eventually, you get there. With better medication and renewed training, I was able to begin rebuilding my artistic career.

-Bill

William Fred Philpott is a Saskatchewan painter whose work distills prairie life, family memory, and the rhythms of farming into a confident, expressive visual language. Raised on Butte Lee Farms in Central Butte, his upbringing in a cattle-ranching family remains the emotional core of his practice. Working in acrylic and oil on canvas, Philpott favours direct application, wide brushes, and minimal underdrawing, creating bold, tactile surfaces that privilege mood and storytelling over fine detail. Today, his work stands as a distinct and enduring voice in contemporary prairie narrative painting. “Born of the West” was a major retrospective of his work hosted by the Art Gallery of Swift Current in 2022.