George Widener
(b. 1962)
BornCovington, Kentucky, United States
ActiveWaynesville, North Carolina, United States
BiographyFor George Widener, numbers and their patterns are vital to understanding and interpreting the world. In highly structured mixed-media drawings, he examines connected systems of numbers, such as the links between birth dates or the significance of the dates and statistics around historical events such as the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Calendars anticipating the future, magic squares, maps, palindromes, sequences, mazes, and puzzles recur in his work. He often uses paper napkins as surfaces, gluing some together to make larger canvases. Their fragile textures contrast with the complexity of the compositions, which range from self-portraits to examinations of the chaotic patterns of traffic in cityscapes.“Time travel, different realities, and parallel universes seem to be embedded within our human experience,” Widener said at a 2017 symposium at the American Folk Art Museum. “So perhaps, even if the calculations in my drawings are too complex to be understood, the subject matter of my work is embedded within every individual’s subconscious.”
Born in 1962 in Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Widener had from an early age an uncommon memory and a talent for numerical calculations. He served in the U.S. Air Force and then studied engineering, but his absorption with calendars and numbers caused him to leave school. He lived itinerantly in shelters and on the streets as he focused on his drawings and obsessively filled notebooks with patterns, systems, and numbers that manifested in his dreams. He was eventually diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.
He began exhibiting his work after he connected with the gallery owner Henry Boxer, leading to a presentation of his art at the 2005 Outsider Art Fair in New York. He has continued to exhibit his work in museum and gallery shows around the world, including a first European solo show in 2013 at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. He is based in Waynesville, North Carolina.
Allison C. Meier, 2025
Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).