The Unmistakable Watercolors of Don Weller - Summer 2008 Issue of Horses in Art Magazine

The Unmistakable Watercolors of Don Weller

by Sarah H. Crampton

Bridle Time – Watercolor, 11.5 x 11, by Don Weller.
The power of imagery was the basis of Don Weller’s livelihood for decades as a highly successful graphic designer and illustrator while based in Los Angeles, California. Now a fine art watercolorist, his unique color palette amplified with minimal backgrounds has an unforgettably distinctive impact.

Don Weller was a cowboy turned graphic designer turned cowboy again. He grew up riding, rodeoing, and roping and continued cowboying in college. The years designing and illustrating in Los Angeles did not erase the memories and cowboy skills of his youth. After leaving Los Angeles and moving to Utah, he became involved with a book project about cutting horses. Experiencing the horses and cattle was deja vu – all over again. He now paints his adventures of his own cutting horses from his rural home in Oakley, Utah, returning to his passions – horses and art.

Weller relates, “After gathering cattle for a few days on the edge of the Colorado River, we pushed them, cows and calves, up a thousand-year-old Indian trail, up rocky cliffs, into Arches National Park. I wanted to document the adventure. The paintings came together in my mind on the five-hour drive home. The gesture of a roper or horse will stir something that makes me think it could be the essence of a painting. That’s how a painting starts — in my mind.”

Weller graduated with a fine art degree from Washington State University where he studied abstract expressionism. He comments, “It always seemed selfish to me, the wallowing in paint for its own sake, enjoying the creative experience. I liked the abstract qualities, the composition, the emotion of the brush strokes and all of that, but I think it needs a little more. For me it needs a subject. Almost always it needs a horse.”

Dual Working Roans – Watercolor, 7 x 9.25, by Don Weller.

Don Weller is not painting the horse or cowboy in the glory days of the wild west. He is documenting the western horse, as they are right now, today, last week and tomorrow. He states, “I am painting horses that look generally like the horses in my barn – smart, athletic, good-looking horses with intelligent eyes, pretty heads, and big hips.”

“Someone once said a painting should ask more questions than it answers, and I subscribe to that,” states Don Weller. The openness of his artwork leaves room in the viewer’s mind to create their own story.

View more watercolors by Don Weller at www.donweller.com.

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