Clinton Whiting’s Veiled Support, showing in an upstairs gallery at the St. George Museum of Art, walks us through time, asking us to reflect on fleeting moments and intimacies, the people we come from and who we are. Whiting uses a Japanese style in his stroke—simple ink brush strokes where a few lines go a long way—mixed with a cartoonist’s ability to apply that same reserve while still creating a cast of characters unique from one to the next. His use of translucent layers and sheer materials allows forms to hover and overlap, offering a way to think about how the layers and foundations within us might be represented. Across the exhibition, he explores how people hold, shape, and influence one another: in close relationships, through ancestral lineage, or in brief, passing moments of shared company.

Whiting seems fascinated with all the stories and lives that make us who we are today. He looks at the ancestors and relationships that have brought each of us to a particular point in time and history (“Present Vertical 2,” 2024). And he traces a chaotic jumble of interwoven stories— kismet, serendipity, and destiny (“Study for Charity Generational Connection 6,” 2024)—that, through community and mutual support (“Build,” 2024), resolves into mentors and specific figures, forming a kind of DNA for our present selves.

At the center of the gallery—an alcove almost like a side chapel in a cathedral—a triptych of large works on organza hangs together. Organza is a tightly woven, traditionally silk sheer fabric known for its crispness and luxurious drape. On the central linen panel, a dancing couple appears, hands on shoulders and waist, painted in warm clay tones. Whiting darkens the arms that would be hidden from the viewer’s sight, as if we are seeing through multiple layers, creating a false depth through material play. The couple is echoed and partially separated by two flanking sheets of organza, where sponge-imprinted shadows form the shapes of the Lark and the Robin—almost as if making the impression of their spirits holding them in this intimate moment.

In another large work, Whiting uses the cross to suggest the intersecting planes of current time and of those who came before us—the shoulders we stand on behind the veil of our current selves. “Past, Present, Future Greek Cross 2” (2024) places a vertical panel of figures lifting one another in communal support behind an opaque horizontal band of indistinguishable people standing in a line. The image recalls the paper dolls we once cut out in elementary school and linked hand to hand, wrapping around the world in a continuous chain.

This motif appears again in Hope Horizontal 1, where figures stand shoulder to shoulder in a long, unbroken line. The scene carries an eerie resonance, calling to mind lines for rations or food pantries during societal collapse. Yet it also reads as an image of collective endurance: people standing together, resisting oppressive powers—an unending line without divisions, standing united. That sense of shared presence feels especially powerful now.

Clinton Whiting: Veiled Support, St. George Museum of Art, St. George, through February 28.

Genevieve Vahl

Genevieve Vahl is a writer, farmer and artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing focuses on how art and community intersect, how to bring access to food and covering climate solutions around the Salt Lake Valley. She also writes poetry, binds artist books, makes paper and runs cyanotype prints from film.