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  Gallery Of Illustrations By Michael Whelan - Usa

Michael Whelan was born June 29, 1950 to William and Nancy Sloet Whelan in Culver City, California.
He has two sisters: Lorie is a nurse practitioner and Wendy is a research biochemist. On his mother’s side, Michael is related to the classic painter Peter Paul Rubens and to Samuel F.B. Morse. Morse is best known as the inventor of the Morse Code, but he was also a talented and prominent portrait painter and was a founder of the National Academy of Design. The Von Sloet family is listed in the Dutch Book of Peerage.
Michael lives in Connecticut with his wife Audrey Price, who manages MichaelWhelan.com.
They have two children: daughter Alexa has a PhD from CalTech and is a research Biologist in New York City and son Adrian is working on a PhD in Astrophysics.
Both of Michael Whelan’s parents grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
I have been interested in the imagery of fantasy since early childhood and all my artwork is, at its most fundamental level, about creating a “sense of wonder”.
In my illustration, my primary concern has been to create a window into the themes and story elements of a particular book.
My non-commissioned work is concerned with more personal themes.
Stylistically my art is best described as “Imaginative Realism”. Most closely allied to the scope and feeling of what is referred to as contemporary “Visionary Art”, my gallery art is intentionally imbued with a strong sense of the mystical or dreamlike, and is suffused with symbolic content.
There is a deliberate attempt to invest the image with layers of meaning while having an immediate subjective or emotional impression.
The majority of my work falls into one or another series of related paintings, which share common themes and symbols. In general terms, my Faded Star series deal with the struggle against despair and hopelessness, humanity’s instinctive striving against what Barbara Tuchman calls the “burdens of modern man”: loss of faith in religion, progress and the perfectibility of the human species.
My Passage series is concerned with a personal investigation into metaphysics, religion, and near death experiences.
My Lumen paintings are about the quest for inner revelation and meaning, of finding one’s true self, among other con

Gallery