There is an art and science to running a creative business. For Ken Wehrman, it’s this combination of left-brain and right-brain skills that has made it fun to make art in a modern business world.

Ken Wehrman was born into a family of artists. His grandmother was china painter; his mother a painter and his brothers are both advertising arts professionals. He graduated from Washington University School of Fine Arts (St. Louis) in 1972 after receiving numerous scholarships including one from the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild. He studied painting, drawing and printmaking but his love was with the camera and computers. “I tried for years to make art on the early PC computers and the fascination has continued to this day” Ken commented. “My first jobs were with professional advertising photographers shooting everything from beer ads to cat food. Now the computer and camera are still my tools of choice, and now they are as natural as a lead pencil for me. Instead of making etchings or lithographs on a hand-made press, I now use inkjet printing technology. Funny, the papers are still much the same, if not better, as from my earliest printmaking days.”

After building a successful advertising firm with several friends and partners in the early seventies, Ken left to start his own design firm in 1978. As president of Wehrman & Company, now a respected brand management and design firm, Ken has created and directed art and photography solutions for hundreds of clients across the country. “I would like to believe that compelling art has been the distinguishing difference in the marketing solutions my firm has provided for companies nationwide. Most likely though, it’s the service my team has provided along the way. We love to make it look easy for our customers because we love what we do.”

Now Ken is marketing his own original digital art and photographic images in Gallery W. A lover of modern furniture and contemporary architecture, his work is strikingly simple at first glance, but each image is elaborately constructed to take advantage of his digital media experience. “All of my images are recreated in the computer even though they may begin as simple photographs. I have learned to control what the viewer sees and I love to manipulate ordinary images until they are extraordinary visual statements.”

Ken works in his studio or on-location with an array of the latest Nikon digital cameras, as well as the old-time large-format film cameras. He crafts his final images more like a painter, using digital tools like Adobe Photoshop, fractal compression and digital noise reduction software, and 3D modeling software. He prints his own work, one-by-one, on an Epson StylusPro 9600 inkjet printer and processes them with Colorbyte ImagePrint RIP software.

“I have always been thrilled by large-format images. They take on a new life when presented larger than expected.” “I am a perfectionist when it comes to creating quality images,” Ken commented. “And I believe scale plays an important role in how an image can engage a viewer. Technology now enables me to print my art larger and with higher quality than I ever imagined.”