Larry Wheeler

Mares and Foals

LARRY WHEELER Having drawn and painted from childhood, Larry Wheeler began his formal art studies with portrait painter Jack Brock, in Atlanta in 1961. Wheeler received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1966. After several years of work as a painting conservator at the Corcoran Gallery and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., he returned to Baltimore to study and in 1972 received a MFA from the Institute’s Hoffberger School of Painting. He has taught painting, drawing, and anatomy at the Maryland Institute and in community colleges in Baltimore. Since 1979, a major focus of his work has been the integration of the human figure into the natural landscape, most often with horses as the link unifying the image. Atmosphere, design, and relationships between people and their horses are some of the important elements in his paintings, captured in scenes from Palm Beach polo to Irish hunts; from Maryland timber races to racing at Saratoga. Wheeler’s commissioned work continues to be in demand. His portraits hand in the State House in Annapolis, Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., the Federal Building in Baltimore, and in many private collections across the country.