Willow Rea Temple was born and raised on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She has always been surrounded by creativity, sparking her interest in the arts at a young age. She received her BA in studio art from the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she focused on print-making and ceramics. Nowadays she is mostly painting and print-making.

Willow has assisted and led the creation of large scales murals from North Carolina to Puerto Rico. She loves to portray the nostalgia and unique aspects of coastal culture within her work. Willow uses bold colors and expressive brush strokes to paint a pathway to new perspectives of day-to-day life.

She uses vintage photographs as references, which lends a timelessness to her pieces, while building up thick and diverse layers upon her canvas. Willow loves to experiment with mediums, in search of discovering new things. Her material list is a hodgepodge of elements, including acrylic and oil paint, charcoal, graphite, ink, pastels, molding paste, and textiles. By using deep pigments and varying materials her goal is to provide a sense of newness, the way wetlands do for her. She strives to reveal a glimpse into a more fantastical world through colors, energy, and texture.