FAYE WHEELER

ARTIST STATEMENT 

My work is abstractions from memories; memories of exploring forests, childhood memories of spilling orange juice on my grandmother’s tiled floor, meeting ghosts in the kitchen. Currently, my process starts with hiking trails in Marin county CA; damp and vibrant redwood forests and golden-grass hillsides. The wilderness in California has become a major source of inspiration for my work. These paintings started as drawings and trace mono-types of flowers I had seen on hikes, and drawn from my foggy memory of them. The flowers are, in a way, made up. They are pieced together on the page in an odd and awkward way. I think about them as figures. The same way I try to remember my grandmother’s laugh, these are unclear in replicating something no longer in front of me. I use imagery abstracted from nature as a metaphor for family members that I have lost. 

I make work with bright colors, gridded pattern, abstracted organic form, and heavily influenced by my place of residence. Since I’ve been back in California my color palette has shifted into greens, pinks, sherbet orange and subject developed into organic forms. Oil painting is my primary medium and I begin my studio process with drawings and mono-types. Trace monotypes and drawings are a quick way for me to work through imagery ideas that then are turned into paintings, which are a slower process, waiting for paint to dry while I think about my next steps. The action of trying to regurgitate imagery from memory mirrors the way I reminisce and grapple with memories of my family members who have passed. Memory, in my work, is an action and reaction to grief. 

BIO

Faye Wheeler was born in Oakland, California in 1993. She received her BFA from Sonoma State in 2016 and her MFA in 2020 in painting from the University of Iowa. She was awarded the Mildred Piltzer fellowship in 2019-2020 and was published in the New American Paintings MFA Annual issue #147. She has shown her paintings and prints in the Midwest and California. She currently lives and works in Marin County California where she spends most days outside in the redwoods and on the coast.