Ohrmann Museum & Gallery

   Bill Ohrmann has gained his most recent notoriety with the series of painting that he did after 1995.  However, he drew and painted all of his life, from his school days, through his adult hood, and into his senior years.  As one would expect, his early works were fairly simple, with animals not always in perfect proportion and a limited color palette.  While serving in New Guinea in WWII, he would illustrate letters that his fellow GI's were sending home.  His usual subjects were wildlife or the old West.

   In his high school days, he took a correspondence class for aspiring artists.  Other than that, he had no formal training.  He said at times that he thought art lessons too often only taught the student to draw or paint like the teacher.  However, he noted how his favorite artists (especially C.M. Russel) approached their canvases and learned from them.  Many of his paintings were inspired by his love of nature, and his time spent in the outdoors.  Reading the Lewis and Clark journals inspired several paintings.  His love of Western history, including before the advance of the whites, led to other works.  All of his later paintings were with oil, but until about 1970 he oftentimes used watercolor.

   His later works (post 1996) were influenced by Van Gogh and other impressionists, but some of his earlier works show that he had experimented with color and content.  The following set of paintings are presented in more or less chronological order, which lets the viewer follow the progress from amateur to professional.