Paul Wicks

Biography: Long and Winding Version

Still young, despite the clear recollection of then President Eisenhower on television, Paul Wicks calls the Denver area home. Nearsightedness derailed an aspiration to become an Astronaut, and a career in science or engineering “in the mid-70’s, would've required a minor in pizza delivery”. Ironically, it was his vision that put him on the path to eventual success. Shifting his attention, he put every effort into becoming an artist. He did (although the path was neither straight nor level).

Beginning with telescopic images of the moon,
Mr. Wicks has lived and breathed photography since 1972. He worked as a wedding photographer while attending the University of Michigan and as a clerk in a camera store while attending the Center for Creative Studies. At the outset of the 80’s, he was compelled to walk away from a job as an artist’s apprentice at a commercial illustration studio, because “lactose intolerance diminished my appreciation of ‘government cheese’; an apprentice is paid mostly in advice, which is simultaneously invaluable and inedible”.

Running a small advertising agency allowed Mr. Wicks to put a degree in graphic design to good use, but also “rubbed me up against a number of early computers”. Having discovered that computer code was just another artistic medium, he created the systems necessary to manage a small business. This brought him to the attention of “biggest-business”. Inadvertent success in the software industry followed quickly. If you have an OnStar button in your car, some tiny fraction of thanks is due Mr. Wicks, who was selected to be the first technical lead for its software development.

After two decades “slinging code”, the siren song of the tech boom proved too much to resist. Mr. Wicks found himself commuting to Annapolis and the Silicon Valley for a ‘start-up’. As the Technical Architect for the central and western U.S. with a newly-huge corporation, it was easy to overlook the warning signs. At one time installed in the corner-window-office on the 42nd floor of a skyscraper,
Mr. Wicks developed a keen appreciation of how far there was to fall. The bubble, as is their nature, burst in 2001. “Sitting around with a dozen colleagues in a restaurant we could no longer afford, I suddenly noticed that every single one of us was out of a job; we were cast away. It was an opportunity to brush-up on survival skills.”

The question appeared unbidden: “If I’m no longer what I was, who am I?” The answer became evident. A decision was made to auction a much-too-expensive camera on eBay, and while people were bidding, “put some film through it, one last time”. Mr. Wicks showed a friend, Denver-based landscape photographer, printmaker, and space program veteran, Tim Havens, some of those images. Mr. Havens advised him to keep the camera and sell what comes out of it. “Luckily, nobody met my minimum bid, so the camera was still mine.”

The next two years saw a flood of successful images spill out onto photographic paper. “I gained an unanticipated appreciation for Dickens, but I also accomplished something that I’d been yearning to do since I was old enough to grip a cable release: produce a body of work.” Paul Wicks is the father of one little girl and roughly four dozen limited edition photographic prints. He is principally a landscape photographer, now living in the vicinity of Castle Rock, Colorado.