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No Billboards, No Way
A painter who has learned from life in the great outdoors
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by Mary Unobsky
Has it ever occurred to you, when you’re looking at a breathtaking plein air landscape, what it takes for the painter to trek to the actual painting location with sketchbook, paints, brushes, canvas and other supplies in tow? Well, just ask Tennessee artist Brett Weaver, who, like the early great Impressionists, travels far and wide to capture the blessings of sunshine and light. He’s a visual troubadour living a lot of his life on the road from a car replete with can openers, Nalgene liters of water, a lichen-colored, wadded-up Oktoberfest sweater, odd pieces of camping gear, baby oil for cleaning brushes (he’s allergic to paint thinner), paints, an occasional energy bar, an uncased Gram Parsons CD, and canvases of all sizes, wedged in and stacked up like an artistic jungle gym, to the top of his Toyota 4Runner’s head lining.
This former civil engineer had a career as a highway designer producing environmental assessments and impact studies, which left him yearning to do something more creative. Growing up in Winchester, Tennessee, he said there weren’t many opportunities for exposure to fine arts. But when Weaver took a family vacation with his parents to Wyoming and saw paintings for the first time at the Cody Museum, something shifted. He began drawing and dreaming, thinking that paintings lasted for centuries. They seemed as solid and substantial as the mountain ranges he had visited in the West, and he wanted to be a part of it.
Pick up a copy of Nashville Arts Magazine to read the rest of this article