John David Wissler received his MFA in 1989 from Parsons School of Design in New York, where he studied with Leland Bell, John Heliker, Paul Resika, and Larry Rivers. He also studied with George Sorrels at Kutztown (PA) University, where he received his BFA. His studies included travel to France, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

Wissler was awarded Artist Residencies at the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation on Cranberry Island in Maine (2009) and The Borgo Finochietto Tuscany, Italy (2012). In addition to teaching and lecturing for fine art classes at institutions in Pennsylvania, the artist has taught by invitation at the prestigious Arrowmont School of Art and Craft in Gatlinburg, TN.

“My passion has always been the landscape. I feel a sense of history when painting . . . the painters I admire and study, Corot, Constable, Turner, Inness, Bonard, Resika . . . the history of the land itself and my own familiar connection to it. Painting comes through the study of nature . . . transformed, not merely copied. Seeing the immediacy of the place . . . what strikes me first. The way trees react to fields, colour to colour, shape to shape . . . pushing and pulling the plastic nature of the picture plane, creating believable space.”