ABOUT MARIE WHEELER~

Marie Wheeler is Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Boston University, 2022. She is from Brookline, MA and received her BA from Mount Holyoke College in 2016 with a degree in environmental studies and a certificate in coastal marine sciences. Marie carries the need for naming and classifying the natural world into her art practice by creating both visual and verbal lists which reveal her own personal collection of desires, confessions, and questions. She works in acrylic, ceramics, collage, and mixed media.

This website is for friends and family, and anyone else who is curious!

ARTIST STATEMENT ~

I make mermaid and text paintings that combine the otherworldly and literary with fine art. The most important things to me in my paintings are truth and humor, and invention and imagination. There are populations of swarming mermaids with wild, manic, female energy. I believe that the ultimate enchantment is through something mysteriously beautiful, unexplainable, and a bit horrifying. Through these otherworldly creatures, I admit fears, desires, and hesitations without explicitly depicting them. I find these dramatic scenes through observing the marks and smears of my paintings’ initial layers.

My text paintings consist of genuine questions, poetic insults, made-up stories, and punchy phrases. I start by making confessional lists that ground themselves in the everyday, but verge on the peculiar and off-kilter. Do you ever wish you were completely covered in fur? I scramble words to collage, revealing new insights. Collage and mixed media are important metaphors for a fragmented and wandering mind. Collage is also essential to achieve surprise. In these insular worlds of mermaids and musings, I reveal my essence while testing and gauging the essence of the viewer. I think of my paintings as self-portraits that reveal my desire and impatience in searching for enchantment and amusement.

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