After growing up in Amarillo, Texas, Don Edelman earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Washington University, St. Louis, where he finished at the top of his class. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign. He has had solo exhibitions at the Inns of Court and the Post Gallery in Houston and the West Lynn Café in Austin, Texas. His work has also been shown at the Watercolor Society of Houston, the Atrium Gallery, and the Museum of Art of the American West in Houston; and the McNay Museum in San Antonio, Texas. Edelman’s work is in a variety of corporate collections including the Texas Commerce Medical Bank, Cooper Industries, and Eagle USA AirFreight, Inc. People in Edelman’s paintings make us want to converse with them. Stereotypes are conspicuous by their absence. Yet, for all their “realism,” Edelman’s works transcend the mere photographic. Visitors to his studio can see some original materials that sparked a painting or sculpture idea – and find them quite ordinary and unremarkable. What next appears on masonite or in bronze is anything but ordinary. Machines, mechanical devices, equipment, and vehicles take on strange liveliness. On his painting, Mr. Edelman says: “Really, my art is a way of sharing with other people what I’ve seen, and I enjoy it. More or less, I’m pointing at this and saying, well, look at this. This is very interesting.”
