Lanesboro Arts has made the decision along with the artist Kathie Wheeler to postpone this exhibition from it’s original April 2020 opening until June 2021. This is due to our efforts to keep our community and artists safe during the COVID-19 outbreak. The health of our artists, community members, visitors, staff and volunteers is at the forefront of our minds at Lanesboro Arts. Taking this into account, March events at the St. Mane Theater have been postponed and the Lanesboro Arts Gallery will be closed to the public until March 31, 2020, at which time we will assess the situation to ensure the continued health and safety of the community.
Lanesboro Arts will present “Heartbeats” an exhibition featuring the work of Viroqua, WI based artist Kathie Wheeler, in summer of 2021 (dates TBA). While Kathie is known for her landscape plein air work, this unique exhibition focuses exclusively on figurative paintings. This expressive series celebrate people from diverse cultural backgrounds, including a young tattooed woman and her dog, a same sex couple contemplating their soon-to-be-born child, and Native American dancers at a powwow. Kathie hopes the paintings prompt heartfelt reactions from viewers as they uncover universal themes of humanity. As Kathie explains, “I try to put the feeling or emotion I see in a place or person on the canvas. My hope is that the viewer can take some of that away with them.”
Kathie describes her process as such: “I count myself fortunate to be an artist. My paintings reflect the scenes and people in my daily life and many are begun or painted entirely on location or from life. Painting “en plein air” is filled with both challenges and great pleasure. No day is ever the same,” explains Wheeler. “And so, I join the long history of adventurers who translate the beauty of their surroundings onto canvas with brushes and paint. It gives me great pleasure to share these moments in time with those who live with my paintings in their lives.”
Kathie was born in 1962 and was raised in the Chicago area. As a young woman, she studied at the American Academy of Art, where she won the prestigious Union Art League Scholarship Competition, then worked as a freelance commercial artist and portrait artist.
Kathie creates remarkable landscapes and portraits and works primarily with a rich oil palette, but also enjoys dabbling in pastel, watercolor. She paints plein air throughout the year, as well as working in the studio. Kathie and her husband reside on a small farm in southwest Wisconsin.
Sponsored by Commonweal Theatre:
This exhibit is sponsored by Commonweal Theatre and made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. For more information visit www.lanesboroarts.org, call 507-467-2446 or email gallery@lanesboroarts.org. Handicapped accessible and free to the public, the exhibition gallery is located at 103 Parkway Avenue North in Lanesboro, MN.