Frederick William Lawrence (1892-1974) was a Canadian American airbrush painter, and probably the father of realistic spray painting.
Once he fully recovered, he moved to Michigan, where he worked for Pontiac Motor Company, where he learned to finish cars and to operate a Duco spray gun.
[1] As he honed his skills, he was featured in various science magazines, Time and on Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
Lawrence began giving performances at automobile shows, spray painting realistic portraits and landscapes in less than an hour.
As more airbrush artists began copying his techniques, however, the novelty of his work began to fade, and by World War II, Lawrence was one of thousands of commercial airbrush artists, and died in relative obscurity.