BIO

Paul Lederer is an artist based in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He has been making art throughout his life experimenting in fiber-based work, black and white photography, charcoal and pencil drawing, watercolor and oil painting.  

Lederer’s fifty-year experience as an optometrist specializing in visual function deeply influenced the progression of his artistic practice. The academic and clinical foundation of his professional work on sensory motor complex intertwined with visual perceptual processing, visual attention and behavior unfolded his creative artistic evolution. His first artistic explorations engaged non-chromatic expression in photography as well as charcoal and pencil drawing.  He then evolved his practice to integrate color through the use of oil and watercolor. This move into color expanded his progression into understanding the further perceptual visual power of two and three-dimensional forms and textures. For him, these forms dance into meanings that reflect movement. They use light to capture a feeling of stained glass on a two-dimensional surface.  It is these combinations and contrasts between abstract, geometric, and organic forms that battle to achieve a connection between earth and light-- nurturing a relationship between concrete structure and movement.

Lederer’s work is also a reflection of being raised by Holocaust survivors and a father (Emil) who spent his entire life as an innovative artist and art display director.  His father’s unique artistic talents were absorbed into the creativity of his DNA.  This foundation was instrumental in contributing to the artist’s scientific and clinical accomplishments and the evolution of his artistic endeavors. His mother (Leopoldina) who, like the artist’s father, was born and raised in Vienna, Austria was also a significant contributor to his artistic style.  According to the artist:

She had a way of making life exciting.   We would often take rides that were made up of random directional paths intended to get us lost. These paths become experiences of observation and discovery of unexpected views presenting a descriptive feel of an adventure.  As is represented in my art it was not where I start, but rather the discovered path that I travel.   I love this path to be filled with unexpected shifts regarding color, shape, movement, depth and texture.  It is the Gestalt overview through which my art leads both myself and the observer on a shared trip of discovering exciting observations along the way.  This experience incapsulates my mother (Mutti) guiding my childhood experience of the excitement for discovering the magic of life itself. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

It was at the end of 2019 that I had a stroke.  I was soon to retire following 50 years of being in a profession devoted to helping others with developmental and acquired visual problems and now I became the patient in need of both physical and emotional care.  Following diagnostic assessment, I entered into treatment by an excellent team of professionals at both the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Chicago and Lakes Area Physical Therapy in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Shortly before, during and after my stroke, I had been working on a painting that I later named “A STROKE ABOVE IT ALL”.   Thankfully, the stroke had not affected my artistic capacity to paint, and in fact, may have driven my passion to a greater degree of emotional expression.  Hence, the title of a series of paintings that has evolved since, reflected upon the same title of my initial piece, paralleling the onset of the injury.

As I reached toward my pre-stroke passion for life, I became more reflective of what life would become, rather than what life once was. This would help me reorient the downside of my emotional state and reestablish my passion for living.   The regaining of that level of passion would not be easy, but was essential for the survival of personal happiness.  It is that forward momentum which touches upon the capacity and rebirth of the human soul as is expressed in the title of Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  Just as Frankl describes my father’s quest to search for meaning following his experiences during war time in the 1930’s, I, too, needed to survive a search for meaning recovering from the effects of experiencing a stroke.  My father’s history, my mother’s passion for life, and my wife’s strength, love and commitment has provided me with the support, courage, foundation and legacy to continue to live a life of meaning, fulfillment, love and enjoyment.