Biographical Information
Ken Weintrub (b. 1947) was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio and first began his painting career in 1966. He received a B.A and M.A. from the University of Cincinnati, moving to Los Angeles, Ca. in 1970 where he studied art at UCLA and Otis Art Institute. In the mid-1970’s Ken apprenticed for two years at Robert Cunningham’s sculpture studio in L.A. For the last twenty-five years he has devoted himself exclusively to painting, often using non-traditional techniques in oils, acrylic, and watermedia. Most recently he was featured in the December 2018 issue of Watercolor Artist Magazine and is an active member of the National Watercolor Society and the Abstract Art Collective.
Artist Statement
Ken Weintrub utilizes simple shapes with changes in hue, size and relational placement to evoke a deep emotional response, which often belies the seemingly uncomplicated images. He invites the viewer to look, explore, and discover the quiet and sometimes poetic subtleties contained within.
“For quite a while I was reliant on visual input for the content of my work. Then one day I went into my studio after returning from a particularly wonderful travel experience and I found that the drawings and paintings of where I’d been and what I’d seen were totally inadequate to express what I was feeling. So, instead of painting what I’d seen, I began to paint what I felt. Right away I was using shape, color, line, value and texture in a non-objective way to express what I was feeling, rather than making a record of the places, people and things that had elicited those emotions. That changed everything.”
Ken enjoys experimenting with different materials and techniques in order to maintain a sense of challenge and excitement for himself and yet says that “technique is just a means of applying paint onto a support. Ultimately what one paints and why is, in my opinion, much more important.”
