Doug Wheeler

b. 1939

Doug (or Douglas) Wheeler is an American artist, pioneer of the so-called “Light and Space” movement that flourished in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s, His body of work encompasses drawing, painting, and installations that are characterized by a singular experimentation with the perception and experience of space, volume, and light. Raised in the high desert of Arizona, Wheeler began his career as a painter in the early 1960s while studying at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles. According to critic and curator John Coplans, Wheeler’s “primary aim as [an artist] is to reshape or change the spectator’s perception of the seen world. In short, [his] medium is not light or new materials or technology, but perception.” Work by the artist is held in prominent museum collections, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. Wheeler lives and works in Santa Fe and Los Angeles.