In the past few years, Jeff has shown all over Texas including Arlington Museum of Art, Gerald Peters Gallery, and Marfa, as well as a 2 year traveling exhibit of work by he and his brother throughout Germany. He was also included in AMISTAD, a survey of contemporary Texas art curated by Gus Kopriva that opened at the Museo de la Nacion del Peru in Lima. He lives and works in Lubbock where he also teaches at Texas Tech University. With the West Texas plains as a backdrop, Jeff creates his own surreal world where images of cheerleaders, hot tubs, and art history mix to create an often humorous look at modern day life on the Texas Plains.
"I am for art that embroils itself and still comes out on top. I think whatever you have, you can do wonders with it, if you accept it. One should not worry so much about innovations if it is possible to deal so directly with experience. The objects [I chose] are used to make art, just like paint is used to make art. The relationships may be the subject matter, the relationships of the fragments I do. The content will be something more, gained from the relationships.
I am from the West Texas landscape and it is my stage. It’s a way for me to make a painting that I hope is beautiful, and something that I am familiar with so I can concentrate on the painting itself. My Art springs from my desire to have things in the world which would otherwise never be there. Sometimes I see it and then paint it…other times I paint it and then see it. When we are giving up, today, the illusion of space in a picture, that doesn’t suit me. I don’t know what else there is. It’s really something if you can get a visual sensation that is pleasurable, or worth looking at, or enjoyable, if you can just make something worth looking at. What the artist says it is, you can see by his work."
--Jeff Wheeler
"The abundance of birds in my small, inter-city yard, is the source of inspiration for my work. These birds have become the stars of my surrealist paintings. I have been able to tell my story through them, by drawing comparisons between their struggles and the human condition. For my process, I see the birds as a part of myself. This affects the way I create their expressions and body language. My own origins compel me to choose among the most common birds native to my yard.
These birds are combined with imagery resembling garden-variety trees and plants. Yet, upon further inspection, they reveal a subtle metamorphosis of this plant life into mechanical elements or human limbs. I see this garden as a self-created mental landscape. Metaphors are cultivated and mixed, suggesting insight into the way my brain works or how I absorb and categorize life experience.
My art also employs many artistic choices inspired by the constant bombardment from the mass media. My ideas are forged by a collective conscience that is nurse-fed by television, religion, the internet, and our fast-paced culture. I like to weave these ideas with images derived from the natural world in an attempt to blur the line between a man-made and a divine-created existence. Depictions of a wide variety of icons provide clues, which all-lead back to my point of view and my evolving allegory."
-- Ryan Geiger
Saturday, April 25, 2009
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