CONTRIBUTING ARTIST: THOMAS WHEELER

The simplicity of the common contrast between light and dark within the artwork of Thomas Wheeler is conceptually and aesthetically alluring. At first glance Wheeler’s images are clearly photographs, perfectly precise images taken from nature at night with additional elements lit to create a haunting attractive glow beckoning the viewer closer as they move within the scene until transfixed. Wheeler directly manipulates each scene he captures using additional highlighted items, some which are recognizable like trees or rocks, while the others are reduced to mere shapes as a square or linear line. The artist’s hand is palpable within each composition decision of what remains lit. The longer time spent with each image allows the viewer to appreciate the subtleties that were once eclipsed by the contrast of the stark glow of lit elements and nature at night with softly lit stars, shimmering snow caped mountains in the distance or the shadow of footprints in the sand.

Conceptually, Wheeler’s process enhances the appreciation for how these images are created. Lose the notion of photography which can only capture a moment in time because each of these images capture several moments up to a half hour of time within onto one surface. One moment has not past but time itself is passing; this passing of time is created only by the actual passing of time not from any other outside means. The artist is not a digital photographer; he does not use photoshop or make any post production alterations. To him they are not tangible options to present the passing of time. The only way to show time passing truthfully is to have time pass. “Everything is created wholly at the time of exposure, at the scene,” said Wheeler. Nature is the backdrop for Wheeler, whose creative journey takes him out into the night of nature on the hunt to find these breathtaking scenes. The idea that this is an adventure through nature but this natural is not as we know it is part of the thought progression when we are considering each artwork and yields to a deeper layer of Wheeler concept. Aesthetically each image is attractive but that is not where the depth of Wheeler’s artworks stops. Questions remain in relation to the lit elements with the work. The red fence like glow that cuts through the middle of a mountain path feels as if it could serve as a warning path only for the daring. Trees are familiar yet when they glow, they become alien, startling and strange. Rare is the ability to glow seen in nature and it is certainly not a trait trees possess but the artist’s deliberate gesture of light within night is not merely for aesthetics but to provoke emotion and moment.

Katherine Cooksey is Art Gallery Director for the The Black board Gallery at Studio Channel Islands. Cooksey received her MFA from Pratt Institute, New York, NY. She is an artist whose works focus on the unrealistic display of the ‘perfected’ physical form and pressures to attain it.