FIVE TO ONE (2010) by Michael Whelan

Acrylic on Panel- 30" x 24"

Watching Michael Whelan out in the world is like watching a sponge soak up liquid.  He’s constantly observing and always packing a camera to document references for future paintings.

He has a particularly keen eye for textures, which I witnessed on a walk at Danbury High School last year.  A patch of rust on a construction dumpster caught his attention that day, but clearly he’d been thinking about it for awhile.  

The rust was flaking off in a large sheet.  He poked and peeled at it, describing how the paint and metal came together to create such an interesting state of decay.  

That’s the kind of playful curiosity that leads to photorealistic textures like in his series Signs of the Times.

I was fortunate that day to glimpse a small part of his process, and I thought to myself, “This is how a great artist looks at the world, with his mental lens wide open, always prepared to capture that perfect snapshot.”