Karen Sue Wheeler | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1955 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Artist |
Karen Sue Wheeler (born 1955 in Winfield, Kansas) is an American artist who was born with a neurodegenerative condition called spinal muscular atrophy which causes muscle wasting. She uses a technique called "layering" that resembles colored pencil. Each painting that she produces takes from 150 to 500 hours to complete.
Wheeler was born in 1955 in Winfield, Kansas, and is the middle of three children. Her parents were told she would not live beyond a year old. [1] Wheeler says that she started creating art when she was 5, because she was unable to play outside. [2]
Wheeler attended Santa Ana College before transferring to California State University, Fullerton, where she received a master's degree in art in 1981 with a 4.0 grade point average. [3]
Wheeler has developed a sling-like device [1] that she wears on her arm to assist her with wielding her tools, rather a brush, pencil or pen. She uses a small brush and very little pigment that creates a dry-brush effect called "layering" that resembles colored pencil. Each painting that she produces takes from 150 to 500 hours to complete. [4]
Wheeler served on the Board of Directors of Very Special Arts California from 1985 to 1992, and currently serves as an honorary board member. She was selected as Disabled Professional Woman of the Year by the Pilot Club of Southeast Los Angeles in 1990, and has been a board member of the (Las) Vegas Artists Guild since 2003, serving two terms as president and was the Director of Vegas Artists Guild, and in charge of Shows until September 2012. [1] [2]
In April 2012, Wheeler with business partner, William Schnell co-created GoHitYourself.com. They created the site to educate persons with disabilities on how to better their situations and to illuminate these situations for the able-bodied person. In 2014, Wheeler and Schnell rebranded and merged GoHitYourself.com with Wheeler's personal site where her amazing art is now profiled alongside her stories about living with a disability. The rebranded site is located at KarenWheeler.com.
Wheeler's early works are watercolor, but she has also used oil paints, acrylics, pencils and ink. Her subject matter varies but she is known to hide a rose in most of her pieces which symbolizes herself. [1]
A pastel is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square, a pebble, or a pan of color, though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those used to produce some other colored visual arts media, such as oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process. Pastels have been used by artists since the Renaissance, and gained considerable popularity in the 18th century, when a number of notable artists made pastel their primary medium.
Stencilling produces an image or pattern on a surface, by applying pigment to a surface through an intermediate object, with designed holes in the intermediate object. The holes allow the pigment to reach only some parts of the surface creating the design. The stencil is both the resulting image or pattern and the intermediate object; the context in which stencil is used makes clear which meaning is intended. In practice, the (object) stencil is usually a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material.
A penciller is an artist who works on the creation of comic books, graphic novels, and similar visual art forms, with a focus on the initial pencil illustrations, usually in collaboration with other artists, who provide inks, colors and lettering in the book, under the supervision of an editor.
Scratchboard or scraperboard, is a form of direct engraving where the artist scratches off dark ink to reveal a white or colored layer beneath. Scratchboard refers to both a fine-art medium, and an illustrative technique using sharp knives and tools for engraving into a thin layer of white China clay that is coated with dark, often black India ink. There is also foil paper covered with black ink that, when scratched, exposes the shiny surface beneath. Scratchboard can be used to yield highly detailed, precise and evenly textured artwork. Works can be left black and white, or colored.
Gongbi is a careful realist technique in Chinese painting, the opposite of the interpretive and freely expressive xieyi style.
Amanda Conner is an American comics artist and commercial art illustrator. She began her career in the late 1980s for Archie Comics and Marvel Comics, before moving on to contribute work for Claypool Comics' Soulsearchers and Company and Harris Comics' Vampirella in the 1990s. Her 2000s work includes Mad magazine, and such DC Comics characters as Harley Quinn, Power Girl, and Atlee.
Prismacolor is a brand of professional visual arts supplies originated in 1938 by the Eagle Pencil Company, and currently manufactured by Newell Brands. Prismacolor products include, colored and graphite pencils, soft pastels, erasers, pencil sharpeners, and cases. In past years, Prismacolor also produced watercolor paintings and charcoals.
Mark Grotjahn is an American painter best known for abstract work and bold geometric paintings. Grotjahn lives and works in Los Angeles.
The MDA Labor Day Telethon was an annual telethon held on Labor Day in the United States to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). The Muscular Dystrophy Association was founded in 1950 with hopes of gaining the American public's interest. The show was hosted by comedian, actor, singer and filmmaker Jerry Lewis from its 1966 inception until 2010. The history of MDA's telethon dates back to the 1950s, when the Jerry Lewis Thanksgiving Party for MDA raised funds for the organization's New York City area operations. The telethon was held annually on Labor Day weekend beginning in 1966, and raised $2.45 billion for MDA from its inception through 2009.
Diane Falkenhagen is an American artist, she is known as a metalsmith and creates mixed-media custom jewelry which incorporates two dimensional imagery. She is based in Texas.
Laura Ann Hershey was a poet, journalist, popular speaker, feminist, and a disability rights activist and consultant. Known to have parked her wheelchair in front of buses, Hershey was one of the leaders of a protest against the paternalistic attitudes and images of people with disabilities inherent to Jerry Lewis's MDA Telethon. She was a regular columnist for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, and on her own website, Crip Commentary, and was published in a variety of magazines and websites. She was admired for her wit, her ability to structure strong arguments in the service of justice, and her spirited refusal to let social responses to her spinal muscular atrophy define the parameters of her life as anything less than a full human existence. She was also the mother of an adopted daughter.
A colored pencil, coloured pencil, pencil crayon, map pencil, or coloured/colouring lead is an art medium constructed of a narrow, pigmented core encased in a wooden cylindrical case. Unlike graphite and charcoal pencils, colored pencils' cores are wax- or oil-based and contain varying proportions of pigments, additives, and binding agents. Water-soluble (watercolor) pencils and pastel pencils are also manufactured as well as colored cores for mechanical pencils.
Natalie Irish is a Houston-based visual artist. Her mediums include metal, paint, clay, fabric, and charcoal, but she has gained attention for portraits created using lipstick. She gained media attention in 2011 for her lip print portraits of pop icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, and Roy Rogers.
Mathew A. Hintz, known professionally as Mathew "boo" Hintz, was an American painter who painted and drew in the impressionist style. He focused on motorcycles and motorcycle cultures, specifically Harley-Davidson.
Benny Alba is an artist who lives in Oakland, California.
Erin Hanson is an Oregon-based artist, considered to be the originator of painting style called "Open Impressionism." Her landscape paintings have been shown internationally and at solo and group exhibitions and museums worldwide.
Rita Asfour was an American modern artist. She was known for her colorful aesthetic paintings of the human figure. Rita projected life and movement by the strength of her compositions. Feminine mystique and sensuality were her trademark.
Heide Fasnacht is a New York City-based artist who works in sculpture, drawing, painting and installation art. Her work explores states of flux, instability and transformation caused by human action and natural events. Since the mid-1990s, she has been known for sculptures and drawings that recreate momentary phenomena such as sneezes, geysers and demolitions—in sometimes abstract or cartoony form—that are temporally and spatially "frozen" for consideration of their aesthetic, perceptual, social or sensate qualities. In the late 2010s, she has expanded these themes in paintings that examine lost and neglected childhood sites, such as playgrounds and amusement parks. ARTnews critic Ken Shulman has described her work as "chart[ing] the fluid dialogue between second and third dimensions, motion and inertia, creation and ruin."
In the early 1990s, a freelance author named Rhonda Dicksion entered the scene as a queer cartoonist. She published multiple lesbian-focused cartoons in a turbulent time for the lesbian community that were considered lighthearted, joyful, and normalizing lesbian as well as interracial relationships. She contributed to multiple LGBTQ+ journals and anthologies. She additionally published her own cartooning books and comics with Naiad press. Later in life, Dicksion went into the Fine Arts sector and pioneered many new techniques in the colored pencil art industry.