His earliest known paintings are watercolor landscapes from his second grade class, which showed notable talent for such a young artist.
At the age of 18, Wickiser studied life drawing at the Art Institute of Chicago Illinois, but due to the Depression, he soon became unable to support himself and was forced to return to Greenup.
During his studies at Eastern Illinois University a reputable artist from Brown County, Paul Turner Sargent (1880–1946) became a mentor to Wickiser and taught him a great deal about painting.
It was at Eastern Illinois University that Wickiser met Jane Ann Bisson, who became his wife in 1936.
He exhibited at the Grand Central Art Galleries in April 1934, and one of his paintings was featured and reviewed in ARTnews.
Continuing to work in two styles, back and forth between abstraction and representation, Wickiser exhibited his paintings at multiple venues, including Rockefeller Center in New York.
While in Woodstock, Wickiser established friendships with Arnold Blanch, Paul Burlin, Rollin Crampton, Doris Lee, Eddie Millman, Milton Avery, Philip Guston, and Barnett Newman.
In the summer of 1940, Wickiser traveled to Guadalajara and Taxco in Mexico, where they visited with Diego Rivera.
That summer Wickiser painted a watercolor series in plein air in the marketplaces of Guadalajara and Taxco.
In 1941, Wickiser was named Chair of the Art Department at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
After that, he had shows at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio (1944) and the Associated American Artist Gallery in New York (1946).
In 1947 his work was shown at the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas, and ten of his color lithographs were reproduced in the article "The American Highway" in The Lamp, published by Standard Oil, New Jersey.
In 1950, he held a conference at the Woodstock Artists Association, which featured talks by Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.
In 1951, Wickiser hosted the Fourth Annual Conference on art at the same venue, including speakers Herman Cherry, Franz Kline, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Ben Shahn.
He also co-authored Mardi Gras Day in 1947 with Caroline Duriex and John McCrady, two other well-known Louisiana artists.
The Compassion I paintings were meant to be uplifting and give a sense of resurrection through square shaped panels and color glazes.
The 1953 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum included Wickiser's work, along with the work of Milton Avery, /Ralston Crawford, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock.
[2] In 1953, Wickiser left Louisiana State University to become director of the art education division at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and after a brief stint at SUNY, he moved on to become Chair of the Undergraduate Art Department at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
In 1959, he had exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, Long Island University, and The Momentum Institute of Design in Chicago.
Fellow faculty included Ernie Briggs, Herman Cherry, Ed Dougmore, Franz Klein, Jacob Lawrence, George McNeil, Stephen Pace, and Philip Pearlstein.
This resulted in the Four Seasons series, which was shown in 1975 at the Pacem en Terris Gallery at the United Nations in New York.
These paintings represented the synthesis of abstraction and representation, informed by all of the styles and themes he had been using since the beginning of his career.
While walking, a few fields away from his studio, Wickiser came upon a stream called the Vredenburg, which he began to photograph regularly.
These pools became the subject of hundreds of his photographs, in which he captured the intricacies of the light, water, and rocks and the reflections of trees and sky.
In 1990, Wickiser traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana to exhibit his work at Gallery 630B after a nearly thirty-five year absence.
In 1997, Wickiser's work was shown in a solo exhibit at The Gallery at the Roundabout Theatre in Times Square, NY, a show that was featured on several television programs made by Images Art, New York and aired on Manhattan and Paragon Cable Television channels.
The light and shadow created by the draped fabric, branches, and leaves became a new fascination for him, which he painted in the years that followed.
[1] In 1996, Wickiser found yet another subject, the patterns and shapes of the shadows cast from trees on his backyard in Woodstock.
He continued to walk on the 200-foot grass path to his studio as he had for the past 39 years, until three months before he died in October 1998.
[1] 1934,39 Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship, Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY 1946,48 Louisiana State Research Council Grant, Baton Rouge, LA 1952 Fund for the Advancement of Education Grant 1956 Honorary Ph.D., Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL 1964 Distinguished Alumni Award, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL 1971-75 Harriman College, Member of the Board of Trustees, Harriman, NY 1975 Professor Emeritus, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY Periodicals "Tiffany Artists are Now on View at Grand Central".