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Few of the late 20th century artists have escaped the snitch-driven critics’ propensity to assimilate and categorize artists’ works. Wickiser did. Not by accident or design, but rather by the sheer force and mastery of the many dynamic phases of his life-long works of art. Abstract Expressionist, Analytical Abstraction, Abstract Representative, Figurative Painting, Semi-Figurative: terms all valid and true at some point in the 70-year span of Wickiser’s paintings. But how do you categorize Wickiser’s paintings, or the poetic soul and unshared visions that surpass the depths of mind-constrained contemporary words? You don’t. It is sheer Wickiser!

A renowned author and art educator, Wickiser’s painting career is a visual odyssey that began in the 1930s with works exploring both figurative and abstraction, then turned to pure Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, Abstract-Representation in the 1970s, only to expand the scope of his works in the 1980s, producing a plethora of jewels in The Reflected Stream Series, which he continued to redefine and paint until his death in 1998.

At the age of 78, retired from all distractions and living in the much-beloved hillside house he and Jane had built 40 years earlier, Wickiser would embark on his final journey into works of his immediate and cherished environ: the land, trees, earth, grassy knolls and trodden path to his studio and beyond. The Covered Apple Tree and Shadows on the Grass is a collection of brilliantly executed paintings, gem-like sonatas that sparkle and resonate with the magnitude and force that was Wickiser.