Sarah Shepard Gallery is thrilled to announce Artist In Residence, an inaugural weekend artist residency and solo exhibition with Bay Area artist Jean Pettigrew Whelan. For one weekend, a corner of Sarah Shepard Gallery will be transformed into the artist’s “studio” where Whelan will join us on-site to paint a new book stack still life. To accompany this ex situ studio exercise, a collection of Whelan’s paintings will be on view including her iconic book, fabric, and milk crate stacks, and an assemblage display of some of her studio tools, props, and paintings.
Whelan was raised in a family of makers and artists who encouraged drawing as a form of communication, exploration, and learning. Her formal training in painting, figure drawing, and printmaking informs her art practice, which includes plein-air oil and gouache paintings in addition to still lifes. Though Whelan considers herself foremost a painter, she also embraces her conceptual bent, exploring themes of authenticity, time, memory, and the nature of reality. When speaking of her studio practice, Whelan explains: “There is a permeability between the world and the interior of my studio, and occasionally, a painting can capture a particular moment in time.”
The collection of works included in Artist In Residence began with Whelan’s 5’11 Stack (Crates). Using her own creative process as inspiration for this piece, 5’11 Stack (Crates) depicts a most beloved and essential studio tool: milk crates. (The stack of five milk crates is almost her height—5’11”—an inspiration for her painting of a stack of art books titled 5’11 Stack #2, included in the 2023 de Young Open.) Whelan’s still lifes decreased in size but grew to depict carefully curated collections of other beloved objects, including mementos, books, and textiles. Her compositions intentionally play on trompe l’oeil—an artistic technique that makes two-dimensional surfaces appear three-dimensional using carefully rendered optical illusions—though imprecision is celebrated and sometimes emphasized. This balance highlights the objects’ utility and sentimentality, producing a remarkable, deeply personal portrait of the objects and their owner(s).
Whelan’s practice is an exploration of both subject and maker. Meta aspects within her work act as an ode to this consciousness: her paintings, such as Studio Wall, Collection, and Bread Stack, include her own studio as a backdrop and often reference previous paintings or the detritus of the creative process such as spills on the studio floor or marks on the walls. In this consciousness is also a meditation on the passage of time and the power of both mundane and extraordinary objects to hold meaning. An heirloom quilt, a colorful paint rag, a first edition hardcover, and a tattered paperback may all find a place within these enchanting “portraits.” By slowing down, truly seeing her subjects, and appreciating them through attentive depiction, Whelan creates contemplative yet playful work that is a welcome antithesis to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it technological content inundating our daily lives.
Whelan will be on-site at Sarah Shepard Gallery Saturday, June 7, 12-3pm, and Sunday, June 7, 12-3pm, painting a new work from her book stack series featuring art books hand-selected by Sarah Shepard, owner of Sarah Shepard Gallery. Whelan will take commissions of her 16 x 20 inch acrylic on canvas book stack and fabric stack paintings throughout the show. Interested parties should bring their selected stack of books (three to seven books) or textiles to the gallery by June 17. A form will be available to fill out for commissions, and objects should be labeled and in a box or bag that is also labeled with the commissioner’s name and contact information. Commissioned paintings will be made in Whelan’s studio after Artist in Residence closes.
Jean Pettigrew Whelan (b. 1968, Palo Alto) has exhibited her work throughout the Bay Area, in New York, and internationally. Her work has been exhibited twice at the de Young museum. She lives and works in San Francis- co. She earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990 and an MFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004.
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