At age 60, Don Reither is both an accomplished and an aspiring artist, consigned by choice to working in sales while completing paintings in his modest-sized second floor home studio.
As he happily produces works of art – “about one a month,” he guesses – Reither is looking toward retirement and possibly working full-time making and selling his creations.
Drawing has always been his thing, he says, beginning as early as age 4. In high school, he “majored” in math and fine arts, he says, and he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from The Ohio State University.
After graduating and working for only a few weeks in industrial design, he became an artist for a Mansfield advertising firm and spent 12 years in the business doing line drawings, retouching photos and providing other art work, primarily for reproduction in newspapers.
As computers gradually became the way of the future, Reither left the business to “hone (his) social skills by going into sales.” He was with a dry cleaning chain and a printing company, among others, and he now sells push brooms to large users such as warehouses.
Westerville residents since 1991, Reither and his wife, Eileen, have two grown daughters, Stephanie and Amy, both Westerville South High School graduates. Amy, of Johnstown, is a Franklin University alumna, while Stephanie, of Virginia Beach, graduated from OSU.
Though he hasn’t always created art for public consumption, Reither has always had a studio. In fact, he works with a supply of oils he bought 20 years ago, and only a few colors have been replenished.
A great volume of paint brushes and pencils of various colors is visible throughout the studio, and the walls are lined with sketches, photos and finished paintings. Animals are everywhere – nothing live, but they’re the subject of many paintings, and related items such as a turtle shell and a mounted deer’s head fill out the room.
Reither keeps a “morgue” – a collection of photographs of various subjects, mostly wildlife – which he uses as composite models for his oil paintings. He’s a hunter and a fisher, hence the interest in wildlife art.
He’s “still learning about colors,” he says, determining how different media reflect similar colors differently. Watercolor blue, for example, dries darker than oil paint blue.
A color wheel he created shows the different shades a color takes as the paints are mixed, a basic concept that is needed for each medium.
Gradually, he’s shifting his focus from wildlife to people because, he says, “people tend to like it more.”
While Reither usually works with oil, he’s trying something different in a painting of his cousin Pete, an outdoorsman who lives in Minnesota. Working from some photos of the coverall-clad Pete, Reither is creating a portrait with acrylic-based watercolors from bottles he bought many years ago that aren’t sold anymore.
It’s a multi-step process that begins with a composite sketch of Pete, which is then traced on paper over a light board and subsequently painted. Reither didn’t like the first version for reasons – facial details, for example – only the artist would notice, so he’s doing it again.
On a wall, he has a smaller charcoal pencil profile of another cousin, Paul, that looks exactly like the bearded man’s photo. Reither plans to frame the finished project, and is looking
at doing a picture of both cousins.
In October and November, 20 of his wildlife oil paintings were displayed in the Ohio Department of Natural Resources lobby just off Morse Road in the Northland area.
He is a member of the Westerville Art League, which has about 60 members, and has displayed his work at their annual shows. Two years ago, one painting won first place at a show. Then, last spring, The Swimmer, a painting of a young girl at Highlands Park Aquatic Center, won the “people’s choice” award.
In February, Reither will speak at the monthly art league meeting. He plans to talk about the importance of knowing colors and how to use them, something he says a lot people don’t do pursuing their pastime.
Though he acknowledges only about 15 percent of full-time artists make a living off their artwork – “Being an artist and selling art are two different things,” and many people don’t know enough about the latter, he says – he looks ahead with optimism.
“Being an artist is like being a rock star,” Reither says. “There are a lot of guitar players, but only a few stars.”
Reither prices his art based on its quality and its potential life, not wanting to create paintings that compete with low-cost stores or take him on the art show circuit. Using another analogy, he likens buying a painting to buying jewelry.
“You can buy costume jewelry or you can buy diamonds,” he says, and his goal is to create the works and the market for the diamond buyers.
If and when he turns to being an artist full-time, he hopes his paintings will endure.
“Most people end up with a tombstone or in an urn,” he says, “but if one of my paintings is around in 300 years….”
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
