“Over the course of 50 some years have done a lot of different styles, a lot of different things and I do appreciate when people are able to look at it and come away feeling like they’ve seen something that’s worth it has some value.”

“There is no central theme to my work. You have about as much of a variety in the wood and the subject matter as you’ll ever see. I don’t specialize in animals or people or in abstract things. It’s a hodgepodge simply because I have a lot of different interests.” Weecks emphasizes the wide variety of his woodcarving subjects, from animals to people to abstract works, stemming from his diverse interests.

“If I had to describe my collection of work in one word, it would be ‘eclectic'”.

“To me, art will always be having a thought and putting that thought into a two-dimensional or three-dimensional image.” 

“The fact that I’m able to create something that’s unique is to me what art is.” 

“Back in back in the late 90s, Photoshop came into existence. Nowadays it’s AI and they they both have a place in art but I’m hoping it will never take the place of the artist, even though I think the argument is now with AI that AI will take bits and pieces of things that have been done to create something new. Artists’ minds don’t do that. they take their own thoughts which have never been expressed and create something that they feel is worthy of putting on cameras or three putting in three dimensions.”

“Some people will know and some won’t know whether a piece of art is real or not. I think the overall trend is to use AI as an easy means of decorating your home. If you don’t want quality, it doesn’t matter. You can just buy quantity and use AI and it looks good. But that to me is not art, it’s copying.”

“Finding a subject is half the joy of doing the work; coming up with an idea or coming up with the solutions to the problems of color or three-dimensional design.”

“Choosing a career, becoming a commercial artist, I chose the hard way. And here I am. At towards the end of my career and still painting very difficult topic matter and enjoying it.” Weecks explains that he chose to pursue challenging, complex subjects in his painting, rather than taking an easier route. Even late in his career, he still gravitates toward difficult topics that intrigue him.

“Going to the Antarctic was much different than going to the jungles of Vietnam. But in that it allowed me to take the time when I went down there because it’s a solitary duty station a lot of free time you do your job, eight hours, 10 hours and then you had the rest of the day to watch movies or play games or whatever you want to. In my case I was doing drawings and woodcarvings from all palettes that I could salvage, and I did a few small wood carvings down there.” Weecks explains how during his time in the Navy and being stationed in Antarctica, rather than sent to Vietnam like he was originally ordered to do, gave him ample free time and solitude to focus on art, doing drawings and small woodcarvings.

“I realized at that point what it basically did for me, the four years of school allowed me to focus on the one thing that I wanted to do was illustration, commercial illustration.” Weecks explains that attending 4 years of art college at Paier College of Art after the military enabled him to concentrate solely on developing his illustration skills.

“The carvings came along later again, I did some in the Antarctic and all along I had wanted to do more.” Weecks traces his interest in woodcarving back to some small carvings he did while stationed in Antarctica. He always wanted to pursue woodcarving further.

“I’m still painting and adding to it after 15 years, so I’m hoping someone buys it so I can stop working on that.”

Weecks goes on to provide more detail about this large mural painting that he has continued tweaking for over 15 years.

“Well, murals are something that I’ve always thought that I wanted to do. And I’ve done for maybe five, maybe six of them over the course of the 50 years. This one [behind me] was one of those things that started off as something different. And I took an image from I think it was in Vienna, Austria from a sculpture over one of the buildings, and I painted that over a course of about two years.”

“I had it sitting around for three or four more years and decided I don’t really like it. So I painted it out and started painting number two over that canvas a couple of years later. I had a nice little landscape for a couple of years and then painted over that. So what you see behind me is painting I believe painting number three, maybe four. It’s a work in progress with subterranean levels of other paintings underneath.”

He explains how this large painting has gone through several iterations over many years, with previous works painted over and covered up. Weeks conveys his ongoing process of tweaking and perfecting the mural over more than a decade and a half, hoping it will someday sell so he can finally consider it complete.