George Widener
*GEORGE WIDENER
Born 1962 – Ohio
George does have an interesting past. His family
history has a hereditary factor with a number of
people going back at least 4 generations who
displayed signs of neurological disability
(sometimes severe) adjacent to abilities such as
fixing clocks, being fascinated with weather
patterns, numbers, and self-taught musicians.
George displayed moderate autistic behavior in early childhood such as walking on his toes, grunting instead of speaking, aggression, and frequent temper tantrums. He was hyperlexia also with a reading capacity well beyond his age. At a time when 'Aspergers Syndrome' was unheard of, he showed improvement at age 6 and was enrolled in public elementary school where he displayed some signs of giftedness (dominating in any subject associated with rote memory) alongside odd, eccentric behavior (getting to school early so he could sit in a quiet darkened hallway and watch the red 'Exit' sign). At other times, walking to school with others, he would often count the passing cars, houses, sidewalk cracks or do a song like counting of the 'powers of two' (a lifelong interest) up to 1, 099, 511, 627, 776 (2 to 40th power). He remembers seeing his grandmother's calendar at age 7 and being absolutely fascinated with it, although his calendar abilities at that time were of a much smaller caliber than they became later on.
George managed to graduate high school and enlisted in the US military for four years. In the Air Force, he was noted for social difficulties (preferring to stay in his room working on his collection of travel brochures and drawing) , and often eccentric interests yet quite competent in his job as a camera technician. On weekends he would sometimes fly to a foreign country he had only read about, spend a few hours walking around the airport, and then fly back. He was formally diagnosed with Aspergers at the New England Medical Center of Boston in 2001.
Progress has been made in George's life by emphasizing his strengths rather than trying to 'correct' his weaknesses. All his life George has made various drawings and had numbers in his head and so this is what he focuses on today versus trying to have some career with broader interests. He is a lightning calendar calculator with a seemingly unlimited range. George graduated college at age 37 while in a special education program for learning disabled persons at the University of Tennessee , eventually earning a general Liberal Arts degree, Cum Laude.
*printed with permission
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George Widener’s Homage to Rembrandt
Commentary by: Art Historian Gary Schwartz
George has created pen-and-ink drawings of sites in the Appalachians in a style that is strongly reminiscent of Rembrandt. What George Widener calls mimicry of Rembrandt is not all that different from what art historians do when they study the master’s drawings. We too pick out aspects of Rembrandt’s style and compositional interests and comment on them. We do this in words and with references to reproductions; George does it more creatively by picking up the same kind of tools Rembrandt used, consulting his imagination and memory and following in the master’s penstrokes. George pays a similar kind of close attention to Rembrandt that a scholar would, with no less respect. I am very taken with these drawings and wish George much pleasure in his recreations of the style of old masters.
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