Biography

Born in Brooklyn and raised in suburban northeast New Jersey, the son of two NYC kids - an economic analyst and a legal secretary - Wayne earned a BFA in studio art, studying with painter Paul Georges and sculptor Peter Grippe. Returning to NYC in September 1980, he settled on the Lower East Side for the next eleven years. In 1982 he earned an MFA at Parsons School of Design, studying with Paul Resika, Leland Bell and John Heliker. He taught drawing for two semesters at a county college in New Jersey in 1987 which was enjoyable but too low-paying to be sustainable. Completely non-paying work included being a board member of Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition just before it migrated to actually mounting exhibitions on the Brooklyn waterfront, and writing, editing and producing its print newsletter from summer 1998 thru spring 1999. He was volunteer show chairman for its Red Hook Pier Show 7 in 1999 and Pier Show 8 in 2000. In November 2000 he was a resident for a month at the Vermont Studio Center, and then joined the artists' co-op First Street Gallery, in Chelsea, participating in a number of group shows, culminating in a solo show in 2007.

He considers himself fortunate to have been able over the years to visit and study the art in the museums of the great cities of Europe, in particular London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Amsterdam, Cambridge and others. Favorite American museums visited so far (besides all of NYC's, of course), include the Boston MFA, the Fogg, National Gallery in DC, the Hirschhorn, Phillips Collection, Worcester, Icon Museum in Clinton (MA), Barnes Foundation, Smith College Museum of Art, and others.

As a working artist, he has maintained an art studio in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn since circa 2000, including a full year (2008-2009) at a (comparatively) huge studio at 94 9th Street, directly under the elevated F train, which led to a series of works, including two here on this site's Large Paintings page. (The many artists on two floors of that building -  perhaps 100 or more - were later tossed out and the building was empty around ten years; its ground floor is now an Elon Musk-Tesla dealership.)

This website is dedicated to longtime neighbor and artist friend the late Liz Holly (1956-2024), and her husband, the poet Art Mortensen.