Artist Dan Welden Finds Harmony in His 103rd Exhibition

Even hundreds of years after it has been created, great music has the power to inspire generations. Like history’s greatest composers, Dan Welden is a man who can’t stop creating. When it comes to making art in his Noyac studio, classical music has been a constant, faithful companion and it still plays a major role in Welden’s creative process.

“When I entered my home tonight, one of my favorite pieces, ‘The Great Symphony’ by Schubert, started playing as I opened the door,” said Welden.

By the way, he is also one of those intuitive souls who takes notice of the coincidences that the universe seems to send his way on a regular basis.

“I’m a believer in what happens, but I don’t plan on what happens,” Welden noted pragmatically. “I was in a nonduality studies group in East Hampton and there was an attorney in the group who couldn’t quite grasp the concepts of this idea, and I said, ‘That’s because you only look at all the facts.’ He said, ‘You’re right.’

“Things happen to me all the time,” added Welden of the connections he sees in daily life. “I’ve spoken to two people who are psychologists, and I said ‘Why does this happen to me and not to hundreds of others?’

“They said, ‘Because you’re open to it.’”

All of Welden’s creative processes, passions and energy (along with his predisposition to coincidence) have converged in “Symphony No. 103,” an exhibition on view through October 14 at Alex Ferrone Gallery in Cutchogue on the North Fork. The show, which is presented in four “movements,” takes its cue from classical music and its title from Haydn’s 103rd symphony, which is nick-named the “Drum Roll.”

But, as is always the case with Welden, there is more meaning here than meets the eye.

“It’s my 103rd solo show since I had the first one in the 1960s,” Welden explained. “Alex [Ferrone] made the title up. It’s based on the 103rd symphony, since my work deals so much with music.

“Alex did all of that, it’s her creativity. I have no problem with it,” he added. “When I’m finished with the work, I’m done with it. I don’t try to do anything more with it. By then I’m doing something new. My mind is not on the old and there’s no ego involved in how the show hangs.”

Though this show includes a selection of Welden’s paintings, etchings and mixed media works, the centerpiece and star of this exhibition are the paintings, which represent a marked departure from the printmaking work for which he is best known on the East End.

A master printer and pioneer of Solarplate etching — a form of printmaking that doesn’t rely on harsh chemicals to create imagery — Welden has worked alongside the art world’s biggest names in the last half century, including Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Lynda Benglis, Jane Freilicher, Dan Flavin and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few. In addition, his printmaking prowess has taken him to some 53 countries around the world.

Educated in the ways of printing at the Akademie der Bildenden Künst in Munich, Germany, Welden explains that upon his return to the U.S. in the 1970s, he saw printmaking, not painting, as the way to make his mark on the art world.

“When I left Munich in ’71 and came back to the U.S. after studying printmaking, I was doing stone lithography because no one else here could,” explained Welden.

Though he admits he wasn’t much interested in being a printer of other artists’ work, in the years that followed, that’s largely where his career took him.

“I got swallowed up by printing while trying to make a mark as a professor at Stony Brook University, so I tried to make a name for myself in printmaking,” he said. “I became an honorary member of printmaking societies and organizations nationwide. So where do you go from there?

“I have this label — I was a master printer. People don’t know that the artist came first.”

But an artist, he is, and Welden notes that he recently sold the biggest painting of his career at the Alex Ferrone Gallery. In addition, on September 19, the gallery hosted “An Evening With Dan Welden” which included a private screening of “Lasting Impressions,” a documentary about his work as a printmaker, painter innovator and teacher. At the event Welden also unveiled a new painting for the “Symphony No.103” exhibition, which shows that he has no intention of slowing down the creative process.

“These are canvases — big canvases, 6-foot stretched canvases — and they are all paintings,” said Welden.

He noted that all this new work has been created since COVID-19, and Welden adds that the irony is it was the solitude of the pandemic that gave him the space and opportunity to dive into it in the first place.

“Because it came simultaneous with a Pollock Krasner grant I had applied for,” he explained. “COVID and the grant came along at the same time, it was the universe saying, ‘You can’t do anything, you have to stay in isolation and here’s $30,000 to live on.’”

Welden’s grant proposal was based on the next phase in a grouping of works he had created prior to the pandemic which he called the “Aesop’s Fable Series.”

“That series consisted of 22 works that had been exhibited at the Parrish, but that show didn’t get any publicity because of COVID,” he said. “Hardly anyone went.”

Those initial 22 works were rendered in black and white, and the images were created from zinc etching plates that Welden had found in an abandoned barn on an estate in Hampton Bays.

“They had been glued together and I had to pry them apart. In doing so, there were these very abstract corroded shapes and images, and I wondered if I could print them,” he said.

Welden created 11 sets of two etchings each for the initial series.

“I looked at it afterwards. I’m not a follower of numerology, but I thought what do those numbers mean? If those numbers come along in your life, that brings you good luck, 11, 22 and 33. I’m also born on the 22nd. On my last birthday, October 22, I had my 100th show.”

“There will be total of 111 in the series eventually.”

Though he’s thrilled to be expressing himself through painting right now, Welden has his talent as a master printer to thank for the countless connections and artist friends he has made on the East End over the years.

“My dearest friend is Roy Nicholson, I love helping him, and I see the joy it brings him,” said Welden. “That’s a reward for me. I’ve gotten to know so many artists in the community. Our last big event at LTV was Printaganza and we had 90-something artists there.”

While he’s enjoying the attention that his painting work is currently getting through “Symphony No. 103” at Alex Ferrone Gallery, Welden isn’t sitting back and resting on his laurels.

“Show’s number 104 and 105 are scheduled for next year — one is at Gallery North in Setauket and the other one is at East End Arts Council.”

“Dan Welden: Symphony No. 103” remains on view through Monday, October 14, at Alex Ferrone Gallery, 25425 Main Road, Cutchogue. For details, visit alexferronegallery.com or call 631-734-8545.