Don Maier
Biographical Sketch
As a teenager in the 1960s, Don Maier began working in watercolor as a means of adding color notations to pencil sketches, which later became oil paintings as he worked in his bedroom at night. He became increasingly proficient at watercolor, enjoying the freedom of capturing an image on location in one sitting. A fast-drying medium, watercolor demands a rapid approach. Maier finds it very fulfilling to be able to walk away with a finished piece within one hour as opposed to when he works in oil or dry pastel, which required multiple sittings.
A native of New Jersey, Maier served in the Navy and fell in love with the western landscape while stationed in California. He made painting trips to Yosemite and the Californian desert. Following a move to San Francisco in 1975, Maier began to paint his favorite subjects - Arizona’s deserts and national parks, particulary the Four Corners region, including Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly.
Maier enjoys the challenges of painting in the desert: the aridity, the sand and wind, and the constantly changing cloud patterns on the ground. He does not spend a great deal of time thinking about his subjects, choosing instead to paint because he loves the process.
Since 1994, Maier has made Marietta his home. He paints Sope Creek near his house as well as continuing to travel in the West as often as possible. He admires the work of Frederick Remington, Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent. Maier has exhibited his work in several gallery exhibitions in New Jersey, California, and Arizona. A graduate of the Newark School of Fine & Industrial Arts, Maier taught color and design, illustration, and computer graphics for ten years Bauder College in Atlanta.
