University of Rhode Island Libraries
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November 2008 exhibit in the University of
Rhode Island Library Gallery is Primordial Tides: Sea
Life in the Art of Prehistoric Peoples, a collection of watercolors by
David Wheeler.
Artist’s Biography
“I
am an artist/educator living in New York State. I have an M.F.A. from Tufts
University/The School of the Museum of Fine Arts and a B.F.A. from Pratt
Institute.
“I have been a teacher and practicing artist for
25 years, instructing at colleges in New York and Massachusetts. I currently
teach at the State University of New York's Empire State College, at Russell
Sage College, and at the Pratt Institute Center Extension Campus at
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. As an artist in the schools I have
worked in 28 Eskimo, Haida, Athabascan, Aleut, Aleutik, and Guichen villages
for the Alaska State Arts Council. I have written of this work and my Iceman
Project in Art Education, the journal of the National Art Teachers
Association.
“My life-long interest in natural history fuels my
work as an artist, science illustrator, and museum model maker. I have made
life-sized dinosaur reproductions for the American Museum of Natural History
in New York and the Osaka Museum of Natural History in Japan. I have made
various other models for the Adirondack Museum, the University of Vermont,
and the Museum of Afro-American History.
“Exhibitions of my paintings and drawings have
been presented at the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian
Institute's Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, MD, The Palace of
the King of Portugal, the New York State Museum, the Center for Advanced
Visual Studies at MIT, the Virginia Marine Science
Museum, and other labs, universities, and learning centers.”
Artist’s Statement
“Being a marine
science illustrator, I have long wondered about the earliest appearances of
fish and sea mammals in cave paintings and rock art. May and June of this
year provided me with the time to research the coming of the earliest
drawings and paintings -- depictions of jellyfish, fish of all sorts, sea
birds, seals, and other marine life. Finding the images, I set about
reproducing them in color as accurately as I could -- not to copy from other
artists, but to experience the primordial impulse, to feel in my own hands
the act of early mark making, to find in the cave art the how and why of the
stunning displays produced in dim lighting in the depth of caves or out in
the open on rocks and cliff faces.
“The how, it turns out, is already known, for the
chemistry of the colors is well researched. Goethite, manganese, and
dolomite provided the pigments, just as animal fat or wet clay provided the
vehicle for the particles of ground stone. Charred
bone or pine sticks provided the perimeter lines in the drawings. After all
was said and done, however, the why of the ancient paintings eluded me, just
as it has for legions of art historians, archaeologists, and other
researchers. Were these images the work of shamans?
The backdrops for initiation rites? A call to the spirits of the sea
creatures, a plea for their return in abundance? Were the paintings fuelled
by the artists' ingestion of psychotropic plants, as some investigators have
suggested? Perhaps the impetus will never be known. My lingering impression
is this: that whatever their larger meaning, context, or degree of
supplication, the heart of the images is love of drawing. In every instance
the paintings seem to me vital, dancing expressions of a new magic: mark
making -- representation -- the creation of signs and symbols -- visual
language -- consciousness.”
The Library Gallery is
located on the main floor of the University Library, 15 Lippitt Road,
Kingston, RI 02881. Library hours are:
| Monday-Thursday |
8:00
am - 11:30pm |
| Friday |
8:00
am - 8:00
pm |
| Saturday |
10:00
am - 8:00
pm |
| Sunday |
1:00
pm - 11:30pm |
For more
information, please contact Brian Gallagher at
401-874-9524 or
btg@uri.edu.
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