Reynold Weidenaar was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1915. He studied at the Kendall School of Design and at the Kansas City Art Institute with Jackson Lee Nesbitt from 1938 to 1940. In 1944, Weidenaar received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1949, the Louis Comfort Tiffany scholarship.  Because of these grants, Weidenaar was able to travel and record his impressions of other countries, particularly Mexico. In 1949 he was elected to the National Academy and he was later raised to full academician status.

Working mostly on copper with all the intaglio processes, Weidenaar produced 212 prints. Weidenaar was one of the first artists in the United States to revive the technique of mezzotint printmaking. He also designed and hand crafted the tools he used to create his prints. Weidenaar died in 1985, in Grand Rapids