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Artist changing the face of nabe

By Dana Rubinstein

The Brooklyn Paper

The Brooklyn Paper / Tom Callan

Artist William Corprew poses with his painting, “Lea Muses,” which adorns the exterior of Red Bamboo Restaurant.

William Corprew is single-handedly updating the tired Fort Greene and Clinton Hill dining aesthetic with house paint and a futuristic take on the age-old art of portraiture.

And he’s doing it even though he only moved to Brooklyn four months ago — barely enough time for the average transplant to arrange his furniture.

Not only has Corprew, a 27-year-old Connecticut native, arranged the furniture in his Quincy Street apartment, but he’s already working on projects inside and outside of four restaurants: a mural on the side of the African-French boite Le Toukouleur, on Bedford Avenue and Quincy Street; murals in a new Mexican restaurant on Franklin Avenue and in the new Moroccan tapas joint in the old Liquors space on DeKalb Avenue; and he has a show of his portraiture at Red Bamboo, also on DeKalb Avenue.

“In his painting, he reflects the neighborhood and its people,” said Jeannette Diop, the owner of the African-French restaurant, Le Toukouleur.

Corprew’s work includes his distinct brand of portrait-painting, with its comic-book, graffiti- and graphic-design influences.

“Aesthetically, some things in Fort Greene could use improvement,” explained Corprew, as he stood in front of the old Liquors spot and across the street from Red Bamboo, wearing a foppish straw hat, black Converse, and a comically large watch.

What sort of improvement?

“My art.”

With that sort of bravado, and his talent at updating the neighborhood’s Afro-punk, French-African vibe, you’d think he was born in Brooklyn.