Weidenhamer Paintings
The artist completed his first painting in 1949. Some of his early paintings were as large as 42 x 480 inches. They were completed with tempera paint on heavy white roll paper. His early works were landscape paintings of places in Ohio, Arizona and Indiana. Most were small, and one of the earliest was an 11 x 14 inch vertical landscape of a tall butte in Monument Valley, Arizona. It featured a road and was an oil painting on canvas board.
Although the artist started with temperas and oils, and later experimented with watercolors and caseins, he has used acrylic polymers almost exclusively since 1962. As preparation for his paintings, he makes pen and ink, Ebony pencil and occasionally brush and ink drawings on premium illustration board. In the past he has used pastels
"Rarely do I complete my finished drawings outdoors. What I am really looking for when I am on site, are the abstract qualities that are going to make my composition. I believe in catching the moment, much in the same way that plein air painters work. Of course, I am looking at the landscape that I am going to draw and the abstract qualities and the marks that I make upon the drawing surface represent that site. Observation is the key ingredient there. What parts are important, which are not, what should I include, how much should I change and how do I decide these things? These are all based on experience."
The artist graduated Purdue University and attended The Art Institute Chicago.
The artist had several exhibitions of his combat art while in the United States Army. He made drawings and painted in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Laos, Libya, Mexico, Peru, the Sudan and Venezuela.
and watercolors on a variety of papers and boards in addition to the Ebony pencil for his preliminaries. All together he has made more than 32,000 drawings.
While the artist has painted portraits and figurative works, as well as the combat art, he started painting his realistic highway landscapes, which have become the hallmark of his career, in 1967. More than a thousand of his creations have been “road paintings”.
The artist is available for interview by telephone or in person between 8 am and 8 pm, six days a week. If your call is not immediately answered, your call will be returned promptly. The studio is closed some days due to travel to make new drawings.