Donald Fredericksen

Don Fredericksen has over 50 years of experience in defense related management positions in both Government and industry. After serving as a Naval officer during the Korean War, he joined General Dynamics Convair in Advanced Systems Engineering. Later he served two tours in the Pentagon in Research and Engineering, the latter one as Deputy under Secretary for Tactical Warfare programs. Besides GD, his industry experience includes Systems Planning Corp. and Hicks and Associates, a consulting firm and subsidiary of SAIC, where he served as President and then Vice Chairman before retiring in 2004. he served on many technical advisory panels for the Defense Science Board, National Science Council, Sikorsky Aircraft, and SPC.

Don has been drawing and Painting most of his life beginning at age eight when he took drawing lessons at the Milwaukee Art institute. In College, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he took electives in color and design and drawing. He was a artist on the UCSB newspaper and annual staffs, and worked for a short time as staff artist for the Robert Palmer Corporation. In the early 60s he took classes through the San Diego Adult Education program, drawing and painting mostly still life and live model subjects. During the 70s, he showed and sold paintings at the Gamma Phi Beta annual Charity auctions focusing on still life, landscapes, seascapes, and WW I and WW II aircraft.

In recent years, his paintings have been shown at juried shows at The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, The Community Center in McLean, and the annual Yellow Barn members show. Since 2002, he has been concentrating on outdoor landscape painting strongly influenced by Walt Bartman, founder of the Yellow Barn. He paints mostly in oils, and has over 100 paintings in private collections. A favorite pastime is painting with longtime friend, Don Srull. They held two-man shows at the yellow Barn Gallery in 2003 and 2005.