Eighty-seven-old lifetime artist, Dan Wetta, a career accountant (who lived a distinctly different life through his work) put his dreams and unique vision of the world to canvas and paper throughout his life. Through oils, acrylics, watercolor, pen and ink, and even crayons, the artist recorded the life he saw, a life framed by a childhood in New Orleans and an education in a Louisiana seminary. He entered St. Joseph's Seminary just before the start of World War II and received his high school and junior college education there. But he joined the Army after graduation and continued college education at night later in Richmond, Virginia, where he raised his two sons. Over the years, the artist took art classes and private lessons and exhibited his work in many public showings, including exhibiting in The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His art encompasses a vast variety of themes, laced with humor, satire, spirituality, and immense respect for life. Some of his work illustrate the artist's reflections on the conflict between science and religious teachings, notably the history of the Jews as recorded in the Old Testament. Some emphasize his humorous characterization of animal life, such as lions, tigers, and cows, while others colorfully express the mystical emotions of birds. This paperback edition focuses on the author's life in New Orleans and the subsequent destruction years later of the Bucktown community by Hurricane Katrina. Dan Wetta had painted and sketched much of Bucktown life in the 1980s and '90s, not knowing that he was recording a world that would disappear. The artist is making available for acquisition by a gallery or private collector the entire collection of his original art and cartoons, his work of a lifetime, in one complete set. Almost all are illustrated in the series of 7 volumes, El Artista: A Lifetime of Curiosity, and they will be published also in paperback in two or three volumes. An Artist's Life is the first of these.
About the Author: Dan Wetta, Artist and Cartoonist I was born on October 10, 1927, and I grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930's. I enlisted in the army in 1946 and was stationed at Camp Lee, Virginia, near Richmond, where I met my wife and settled down. My father was a commercial artist, a steel and copper plate engraver for Dameron Pierson Stationery company in New Orleans. He was foreman ot their printing department. One of his tasks was to engrave printing plates to create paper money for Central and South American countries. I began drawing and painting as a child, but did not want to become a commercial artist like my father because I wanted to paint things that interested me, so I made a living as an accountant-auditor. I have exhibited at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and was a member of the Richmond Artists' Association for about fifteen years. We used to have fun exhibiting at malls until one day a City of Richmond Sales Tax Agent came by with a note pad and began writing down the names of artists who did not have a sales tax license. When I got the city license, the IRS required me to file a quarterly FICA tax form, and the State said I had to have a business license, and then the malls got worried about liability, so they made us buy liability insurance. Rules and regulations were taking up so much of my painting time that I said, "To heck with it, and I quit exhibiting." As a result, I have acumulated quite a few paintings over the years. This is why my life's collection of work is pretty much intact, and I decided to exhibit through books.