Click image for video

One of midwest’s most celebrated artists, John Robert Weaver (b. 1935 in Stillwell, Kansas) has created an impressive body of work over many decades of artistic activity. From 1941 through the present, he has explored a wide variety of artistic mediums and techniques, including ink, charcoal, lithograph, oil paint, woodcut, pencil, and pastel. After a brief period of experimentation with abstraction in the 1950s and 1960s, Weaver returned permanently to the realm of representational art, focusing on portraiture, animals, and other natural subjects with a distinct stylistic vision that is highly expressionistic and often very personal.

The subjects and themes of his work are deeply connected to his own history and heavily influenced by his experience growing up in the rural farmland of the midwest. Although many of his most important paintings are large monumental canvases (up to15 feet in length), he has also built an extensive body of smaller works, including hundreds of color lithographs and ink drawings.

John Robert Weaver, An American Artist features approximately 60 key works that will offer viewers a firsthand experience to the singular vision and the lifetime achievements of this artist through his paintings, drawings, and prints.

This exhibition is curated by Norman A. Geske, Director Emeritus of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska. He has written extensively on topics in American art, including his forthcoming book, Beyond Madness: The Art of Ralph Blakelock (2007), which examines the career of the late 19th-century painter of visionary landscapes.