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Stringbeans by Morgan Weistling, oil painting, 30 x 26. |
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Morgan Weistling: Weekend With the Masters Instructor
Well known for his paintings of early American pioneer life,
Morgan Weistling began his art career as a movie-poster illustrator. While still
a student and working at an art store, one day a prominent illustrator came in
for supplies. Weistling showed him his student work. The next day he found
himself employed at one of the top movie poster agencies in Hollywood. "At
that time, all I wanted to be was an illustrator," Weistling says,
"but that was amazingly fast." For the next 14 years he illustrated
for every movie studio in Hollywood as well as many other fields of
illustration. After 14 years, he left illustration to pursue a fine
art career in painting.
At age 14, Weistling began his schooling with famed teacher
Fred Fixler in Southern California. There he would learn the importance of
tonal draftsmanship and capturing the effects of light. At the Masters of the
American West Fine Art Exhibition & Sale, Weistling won the David P. Usher
Patrons' Choice and the Booth Museum of Western Art Artists' Choice awards for
his paintings The Country Schoolhouse, 1874 in 2010 and for The First Dance in
2008. He also received the Patrons' Choice Award and the Artists' Choice Award
in 2007 for The Quilting Bee, 19th-Century Americana; the Trustees' Purchase
Award in 2002 for The Family Trade, which was acquired for the Autry's
permanent collection; and the Patrons' Choice Award in 2000. In 2001 he was the
youngest person to win the Prix de West Purchase Award and also won the Nona
Jean Hulsey Buyers' Choice Award from the National Cowboy & Western
Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 2008, he won his second Prix de
West Purchase Award for his painting Indian Stories.
Weistling and his wife, JoAnn, also an artist who paints
under the name J. Peralta, reside in California with their daughters, Brittany
and Sienna. Weistling is represented by Trailside Galleries, in Jackson,
Wyoming, and Scottsdale, Arizona. Giclée reproductions of his work are
available through Greenwich Workshop dealers. For more information on
Weistling, visit his website.
Return to the Weekend With the Masters Meet & Greet.