I come from a long heritage of family creativity. My father, recognized American artist Robert DeForest Whitman, was a cofounder of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) with Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Kluver.
My father is a pioneer in the field of performance art and is represented by the Pace Wildenstein Gallery. In addition, some of my ancestors were instrumental in the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and served as presidents of the museum.
In my work, I continue the surrealistic vision of my father through the media of oil and acrylic on canvas, where vivid colors are utilized in an imagined experience that depicts light and life. My use of flat space has is modeled after the work of Milton Avery.
After graduating from the International School of Geneva, where I concentrated on art and ceramics, I attended university in California, studying science. During the 1980’s, I studied oil painting under Mel Leipzig, a former Rhodes Scholar whose vast attention to detail is now a central part of my city scapes.
At the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, I earned an MFA while studying under Hanniline Rogeberg, Mel Edwards, Phil Orenstein, and Judith Brodsky.
During the 1990s, I held the position of seminar instructor at Princeton University. I later relocate to upstate New York, where I began to concentrate on further developing my own styles of contemporary abstract painting and primitive surrealism.
Despite the differences in subject matter, I approach both styles my own signature techniques, which make my paintings easily recognizable and increasingly sought after by both prominent local residents and international collectors.
My work is now part of the permanent collection of Princeton University at Wilson College. In the year 2000, I joined a studio consisting of a local group of artists in Saratoga County, New York.
I have held numerous exhibits with showings at Rutgers University, Princeton University, commercial locations in Saratoga Springs, and at galleries in Manchester, Vermont, and Kingston, New York.
Artistic Mission
I paint in two unique, distinctive styles. My most recent work consists of contemporary abstract paintings, that are imaginary images, and primitive surrealistic paintings, that are renderings of buildings in Saratoga Springs, New York…more