{"id":95494,"date":"2025-08-16T08:57:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T15:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=95494"},"modified":"2025-08-26T07:51:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T14:51:58","slug":"the-wheatley-family-explores-city-space-and-identity-in-date-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-wheatley-family-explores-city-space-and-identity-in-date-night\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wheatley Family Explores City, Space and Identity in \u201cDate Night\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Painting

Justin Wheatley, “The Cactus”<\/p><\/div>\n

On Friday evening, as part of the August Gallery Stroll, the ever-gracious and most erudite David Ericson and his staff hosted the Wheatley family of artists in their cozy gallery in the Avenues. In an exhibition titled Date Night<\/em>, pride of place went to Justin Wheatley, fresh from a sponsored visit to New York City, whose paintings of that city largely filled the well-lit space. Also more than present were his wife, the architect and architectural photographer Camille Wheatley, and their teenage daughter, Sofi, a precocious artist in her own right to whom the Ericsons devoted their front wall, which usually displays a rotating selection from the gallery\u2019s extensive holdings of premier Utah artists.<\/h4>\n

Justin Wheatley is a devout member of the LDS community, who views his art as part of his effort to improve the world through its practice. I say this not on the basis of having followed his artistic evolution over the years, but because it was the first, and apparently to him the most important, point in his Art Talk at the opening. To me it was evident that New York, a city that boasts nearly one million buildings, was the ideal locale for an artist whose primary subjects are the abodes\u2014and, here, the street scenes\u2014that house the implied but unseen human population that creates and inhabits them.<\/h4>\n

While he continues to paint individual buildings as exemplars, recently Wheatley has also moved in closer and often focuses on specific evidence of their occupants, as seen in \u201cThe Cactus\u201d and several facades that foreground bicycles: exemplars of urban life that connect New York\u2019s urban scene to those of cities throughout the world. This move closer, possibly influenced by Camille\u2019s choice to focus on acts of observation, motivates the fragmentation seen, for example, in the gallery’s pairing of \u201cAmsterdam Avenue\u201d and \u201cPenn Station.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"Painting

Justin Wheatley, “Searching for Something”<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n