George Widener American, b. 1962

 Self-taught artist George Widener creates collages and drawings rooted in his extraordinary gift for numerical computation. His large, intricate works explore maps, math, time, and language through calendars, puzzles, and patterns. The “Inner Landscape” series (2018) combines calendars, historical imagery, and East Asian calligraphy.

Widener recalls transforming numbers into dates as a child, a skill later linked to his Asperger’s diagnosis. Born in Cincinnati, he served in the U.S. Air Force, studied engineering, and eventually turned to art after a mental breakdown and financial struggles. He obsessively recorded historical dates and counting systems in notebooks, often while living in shelters or traveling on a shoestring through 70+ countries. In the late 1990s, a Tennessee State vocational rehabilitation program connected him to the artworld.

Using found and pieced paper, or a support of layers of tea-stained paper napkins, Widener creates mixed-media works with bold palettes and intricate patterns. His innate ability in drawing merges his preoccupation with the space/time continuum, numerical systems, and mind games based on historical events and dates. The sinking of the Titanic has been a fixation since he discovered that a George D. Widener from Philadelphia and his son died on the ship.

“The subject of my work is that of time and, more precisely, the shifting and symmetry of time—which I believe occupy every individual’s subconscious,” says the artist, adding: “I believe that truths are often revealed in unexpected divergent events, the past and the future are joined in subtle ways. I’ve been interested in disasters as an anthropology project of sorts.” He also explores “magic time squares”—numerical grids reimagined with dates—to form “Magic Circles” that anticipate a future of artificial intelligence and human augmentation.

Widener has received international recognition, including appearances in My Brilliant Brain: Accidental Genius (2007) and Ingenious Minds (2011). His work has been shown at major institutions worldwide and is held in collections such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), and the Collection de l’Art Brut (Lausanne).