WENDY WHITSON PAINTS INSIDE THE LANDSCAPE

In 1996, North Carolina native Wendy Whitson was living in Atlanta and pursuing a successful career in graphic design, including work for McGraw-Hill and for a large architectural firm. She was following her own dictum to “enjoy whatever you are doing until the next thing comes along.” During a weekend in Asheville, she visited Marie Hudson and Betty Clark in the River Arts District’s Warehouse Studio and noted with interest that these two ladies were making a living as fine artists. Whitson and her husband moved to Asheville in 2000, but her commercial career continued to absorb her creative energy, leaving no room for fine art.

In 2003, it was time to resume painting. Whitson sold her graphic design business and scouted for studio space. She heard of an available studio in the River Arts District’s “RiverLink Building.” Only when she arrived at the building did she realize that this was the Warehouse Studio in which she had seen Marie Hudson working. She promptly leased the space in which she still works and sells her acrylic paintings.

Whitson says, “When I saw this studio, I felt peacefulness. This is the time; this is the place. I was coming back to myself.” She had painted both figurative and abstract art during her studies at East Carolina University, and planned to draw on her past.

For an exacting artist like Whitson, however, the transition was not quick. She had a passionate interest in landscapes, but needed to develop her abstract-impressionist style. Her acrylics are mostly large-scale paintings inspired by an actual scene but releasing the color that she sees inside the location. She spent a full year painting before she was satisfied with a work and placed it for sale.

When Whitson paints flowers, she likes to concentrate on one specimen among a mass of flowers. That one flower is treated realistically; the rest feel like that flower but are abstract. That approach can be seen in “Queen’s Anne Lace.”

Whitson’s paintings are heavily layered. She always starts with a random grid that is dripped onto the canvas, and then paints as many as ten or eleven layers on top of that grid. “The grid represents God’s master plan for everything we find in nature. What I am painting is nature,” she says. The result is a feeling of place represented semi-abstractly.


She used to work on three to five paintings at a time, but in recent years finds that she is actively engaged with no more than two new works. She may be preparing the grid for the next effort, and always has ten more ideas simmering on a back burner, but she is happy with one or two works dominating her thoughts.

You can see more at wendywhitson.com or visit Wendy Whitson’s studio between 11 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Some of her paintings will be at the Arts Council of Henderson County’s “River District Artists” group show from May 1 through June 20, 2009. She will also be represented at the Haen Gallery in a “Collectors’ Circle” show sometime in July.

Paintings accompanying this column © Wendy Whitson: “Cosmos,” “Queen Anne’s Lace” and “On the Parkway.”

© 2009 Edward C. McIrvine

Arts Spectrum column #428

April 10, 2009
corrections added April 17, 2009