BIOGRAPHY of Samuel E. Ingwersen - The Artist/Author
 
Samuel Emil Ingwersen, AIA, was born in Aurora, IL, in 1927. He moved to Middletown, OH where he grew up, went to school, worked in the steel mill, and played golf. Sam was only seven when his father gave him his first set of golf clubs. This was the beginning of his interest in golf. Sam has found an interesting similarity between the game of golf and painting. Both are forms of recreation which have the ability to thrill, giving Sam a heightened sense of reality, whether through the stroke of his brush or the stroke of his golf club.

 
Miami University Golf Team 1951
He received his training in watercolor painting while pursuing degrees at Miami and Cornell Universities. He was co-captain of the 1951 Miami U. golf team, MAC champions that year. The winning team is shown below, consisting of a group of great guys. Sam is standing between two other standing team mates. Life at Miami was a pleasure, good times and friendships, not forgotten.

While at Miami University he met a super lovely girl from Western College, Frances Robinson. She liked the golf but seldom played. Early on in their romance she would chase practice balls on Western’s hockey fields prior to Sam’s and the team’s matches. She also had this gift; a knack of talking in superlatives about the game he loved, that was romance, so they married. They were so fond of golf that Sam and his bride went to a PGA tournament on their honeymoon. He played golf at a swank resort while she slept in. Sam got up every morning at 5AM to be sure of getting a tee time and was back in bed by 9 AM. These were the best of times. Sam played 4 years on the golf team, drank the best DKE free brands and graduated with a GPA slightly above average mediocrity. Sam made all-conference in the sport of chasing possibles only to get caught for speeding by a Western College ball of fire. Sam and Frankie had four sons and lived a happy life together, married for 58 years until her passing in 2011.

As principal of his firm, Sam practiced the profession of architecture for more than 55 years. Sam has also lectured for many years on a popular topic entitled “Architecture, Tastes and Technology”. These are fascinating subjects that have addressed architectural design and the age old conflicts of artistic vs. aesthetic and function vs. purpose. These subjects have been written about since the time of the Greeks 2500 years ago. These themes are prevalent in his new book, “Dangerous Beauty.”

These architectural subjects are instructive with many corollaries to another art, the art of golf course architecture, which has a literature of only 100 years old, currently seeking an identity of its own. Sam is also one of the world’s top golf landscape artists and was honored as “Artist of The Year, Golf Expo ‘91” at a golf art exhibition in Charleston, South Carolina. It was indeed a unique award as the exhibit was devoted only to golf art and included work from thirty top internationally known artists and sculptors from the US and the UK. Sam has received many awards for his watercolor landscape/seascapes. Two art galleries in New York City where he has shown were successful in sales of his work. One gallery, The Sportsman’s Edge Gallery owner tells an interesting story about the sale of one Sam’s pieces that was displayed next to a painting of the same golf landscape subject by the watercolor master, Arthur Weaver. A serious buyer who had originally made arrangements for buying the Weaver came into the gallery to complete his purchase. Upon seeing the Ingwersen and Weaver paintings hanging side by side he walked out of the Sportsman’s Edge Gallery with the Ingwersen painting.