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Why does Don Weddle paint the way he does?
Within 20 works prepared for a solo show at a recent Small World Gallery opening, Weddle displays a whiplash of contrasting styles. There is the warm, candlelit Old Masters-style realism depicting Bethany Lutheran Church’s sanctuary during Christmas Julotta services. There is also the Impressionist-like nudes and the raging color of abstract landscapes.
Perhaps some of the answers to why Weddle paints in such a wide range of styles can be found in two pieces of information. One, Weddle is a lifelong student of art history. Two, he carries great sentiment for Swedish heritage and Swedish-immigrant-founded
Lindsborg, which he considers his hometown. |
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“I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” Weddle said when asked to describe his style. “I am willing to accept the label of eclectic, which is sometimes not the highest praise.”
You’d think that after 82 years of life experience, a four-decade career as a noted art teacher in Wichita, the mental digestion of thousands of art books, and lots of international travel, Weddle might have honed in on one approach.
No way.
“I find myself drawn to different inspirations,” he said. “I get excited by approaches that are foreign to me.”
Lee Becker, a Lindsborg artist and long-time Weddle friend, observed that Weddle is the visual arts equivalent of a “jazz guy who takes off from another player’s riff and makes it his own. |
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“Don just gets a lot of pleasure out of playing with visual styles and ideas,” Becker said. “He knows tons about art history, more than a lot of folks, and I think part of his love of experimenting is because of that.
“Don gets so excited about everything. It comes from love, especially love of the arts,” Becker said.
It seems that Weddle has always had a roving mind. For example, he can paint a vivid word picture of his gadabout youth in 1930s Lindsborg.
“Any summer day in Lindsborg, you would find my friend Dick Elving and I roaming the town, seeing what’s going on. We’d spend all day doing it.
”We’d go over to the cabinet maker, John Altenborg, and he’d show us what he was doing. And then we’d be at the blacksmith shop watching Ed Johnson. He’d burn some holes in pieces of bamboo for us and off we’d go with flutes. |
“Then we’d stop at the tire shop and get some rubber for slingshots, and then climb on top of the grain elevator for the best view in town.
“We’d peer into Anton Pearson’s woodcarving studio, and then walk over to the Bethany College campus. At Presser Hall you could often stand outside and hear the orchestra practicing -- a Sibelius symphony or something -- and sometimes we’d sit in the balcony for awhile to listen and watch.
“I remember hearing Arthur Uhe, the famed violinist who they said traveled regularly
from his Lindsborg teaching post to Chicago to perform.
“And then we’d go over to Dr. Sandzen’s and pester him. Now, he was doing some gutsy stuff at that time in a small town, painting the way he did.
“These people were my heroes, really Of course, I loved baseball, and (Detroit Tigers slugger) Hank Greenberg was a hero of mine. But the local insurance man or the hardware store owner and the mechanic and the harness maker all had much to offer, not only in their jobs but in the arts. They were heroes, too.
“It was a period of wonderment,” Weddle said, that set a tone for the rest of his life.
After Navy service, Weddle returned to Lindsborg and Bethany College in 1946 to finish his degree in art. There he was influenced by another artist who refused to settle in: Lester
Raymer.
“When Lester first came to town, there was an explosion of art students. I started to emulate his curiosity, perhaps to a fault.
“Lester was wide-open in his inspirations. He drew from mythology, religion, and cultures from all over the world.
“He was a low-key teacher, but good. You desperately tried to please him. “An evening around the fireplace at Lester’s studio was always an event. We talked of art and music, almost as you would in a French grotto on the Left Bank. Students also were of varied ages at that time. Some had just returned from war and were more mature.”
Weddle drew heavily on Raymer’s philosophies as he started his own art education career in Wichita.
“There were so many art movements going on in the years that I taught,” he said. “It was hard to keep up with everything going on. I made sure we had a better-than-average collection of art books, and I would need to take students by the sleeves to the library to get them to look at the possibilities.”
Weddle’s loyal cadre of successful former students call and stop by to see him. Many have careers in book illustration, graphics and design, and some in managing top-drawer U.S. art museums. However, among the best known former students are two internationally known artists: sculptor Tom Otterness and painter David Salle.
“I’m like a lot of Swedes. We have a great pride -- not an arrogant pride, but a quiet pride, the pride of endurance.
“My grandmother came from Sweden, by herself at 15, through New York and on to Kansas City, where she sat on her suitcase until her uncle could get there to pick her up.”
“I love the immigrant faces, the idea of people who are seeking.” he said. “I paint a lot of immigrant portraits because I so respect what they did.”
While Weddle never seems satisfied to settle on one theme or style for himself, he does seem at ease with how he works.
“I’m just not very competitive,” he acknowledged. “I had a guy tell me, ‘Weddle, you’re just not ruthless enough,’ and it’s true.
“Maybe I’m just a teacher who paints,” Weddle said with a second’s pause for reflection. Then he laughed. “I have a lot to be modest about.”
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