By Cody Crawford

Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 20, Jordan Weisenauer changed his major to art. Now 24, he is a professional artist, working mostly on commissions, and is highly respected in the art community.

His website boasts over fifty original works. “I view everything as a metaphor for something else,” he stated in a recent interview. “Just as a director would place an apple in a scene, I like to arrange my pictures so that they mean something.”

Jordan’s favorite painting is one in mostly gold, a man standing by a bannister with a dog. He talked about the color, how it was mixed from green and purple. “That’s kind of my transition from what I do now to what I want to do in the future.”  View Jordan’s favorite painting on his website.

His art can be viewed and bought at the Dixie Folks gallery in Pulaski, Tennessee, owned and operated by Matthew Fulkerson. On a recent visit there, Matthew pointed to one of Jordan’s large pieces displayed prominently in the back of the gallery. An angel bent over a table, studying a book. A thin, white hand reached down from above, and two blue hands reached up from a cavern in the floor.

When asked about the painting, Jordan laughed. “I did that at a paint party and painted it in front of an audience. You always see demons in red, but I did a blue hand reaching up instead.” He said he completed the painting in about two hours and touched it up when he got home.

“In purgatory, which hand are you going to reach for?” he explained. “When I see it now, that’s what I think of. I don’t think I was having those thoughts at the party.”

Jordan stretches his own canvases and mixes his own colors. “I take it more seriously than I probably should,” he commented. “I like to think of painting as a science.”