“Whiteman’s Iconic Paper Works,” Dana Standish
Ed Whiteman decided at age 17, that he wanted to be a painter, a decision that he describes as “very immediate.” It came to him in a flash one day when he was a commercial art student in upstate New York as he was looking through a book of paintings by the Zen- influenced Morris Graves. “It mirrored perfectly my experience with nature,” says Whiteman. “Up to that point I wasn’t aware there was such a thing as fine art or painting. When I saw Graves’ work I said ‘I can do that.’ In the next year and a half I painted more blind bird paintings than you could shake a stick at.”