Dave Weaver is an artists that resides in south-central Pennsylvania. His artwork focuses on freshwater game fish, the saltwater flats, and the wildlife in and around Gettysburg. In addition to his wonderful paintings, Dave is an avid fly fisherman, civil war historian, and military veteran. His trout paintings truly standout and something I know many would enjoy learning more about.
1 - Dave: Tell me more about your background with your art.
I’m essentially self taught and would describe my art as best categorized as subject interest illustration. The word “illustration” tends to have somewhat low brow connotations in the elite fine art realm these days. That’s fine with me - my art isn’t a big deal. I think too many artists go to ridiculous lengths to explain how their work adds to the human condition or to demonstrate how sensitive they are. I don’t claim that my artwork has much real purpose other than to make fly fishermen happy.
Although I loved drawing animals as a kid, I didn’t start painting seriously until about 1992. It seems perfectly natural to me that my passion for sport fishing came to dominate my art topic matter. Any painter worth the stains on his or her palette has a passion for producing art – speaking for myself, however, I have a passion for fish and fishing and it’s really from this passion that my art got started. There’s something of a longstanding cliché among artists that it doesn’t matter what you paint, merely how you paint. While I agree with this in the abstract, for me subject matter – primarily trout – is a big part of what lured me back to drawing and putting paint to canvas. I started competing in trout stamp competitions about that time and eventually went on to win four competitions as well as placing in quite a few others. It wasn’t easy and a humbling experience.
While I’ve had the great good fortune to have had many mentors in other endeavors, with art I struggled to learn alone. I simply didn’t know anyone else who painted in the sport fishing genre whose shoulder I could watch over and to whom I could ask questions and seek constructive criticism on a regular basis. Fortunately there are many masters whose work I could study and I continue to scrutinize their work with an eye toward identifying the qualities that make it great. I did receive a lot of encouragement from fly fishermen and fly shops. In particular, I appreciate the encouragement from the late Dr Jack Beck of Cumberland Valley Trout Unlimited and Enoch “Inky” Moore of the Pa Fish and Boat Commission. Special thanks for getting me started in fly fishing art also needs to go to Yellow Breeches Outfitters, the first gallery (fly shop really) to show any confidence in selling my trout art. They continue to display my work after 15 years - ditto with regards to Lord Nelson’s Gallery here in Gettysburg. I sincerely appreciate their support.
2- Dave: Where do you get your inspiration?
Inspiration for me flows primarily from fish and their environs. This is particularly true with trout. As your readers are well aware, wild trout are possessed of absolute beauty and I’m as fascinated with the physical traits of trout as anyone, especially brook and brown trout. As I like to say, I could paint brook trout for the rest of my life and never get bored. However, the form and coloration of brown trout, I find, are more mysterious, ephemeral, and difficult to portray than brook trout. I can’t explain why this is, but browns have always been tougher for me. Whatever the case, any honest Pennsylvania fly fisherman is inspired by wild trout. So am I.
Gazing at the work of great sporting and fish artists is also inspiring. Most of the great sport fish artists are contemporary. The fishing art genre, however, recently lost its patriarch, Stanley Meltzoff, at the age of 89. In my view, the current master of fish art is Mark Susinno, who, not surprisingly, lives and paints here in PA. Not only is Mark the best game fish artist in the world, he’s a hard core fly fisherman and a heckuva nice guy. I’m also stunned by the beauty and accuracy of artists like Mike Stidham and Joseph Tomelleri. Paintings by artists like these masters on top of their game are always an inspiration to me.
