Adam Wheatley

Adam Wheatley, 36, is a fulltime artist and works from his home studio in Bexley, Sydney.

He has had three Sydney shows: Rushcutter’s Bay Gallery November 07, blank_space gallery July 07, and Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club October 06.

Adam also has work at Sydney’s Newport Gallery and Melbourne’s Greenwood Gallery.

Despite growing up in the virtual cultural desert of Newman, in outback W.A, Adam painted and drew from an early age, inspired by iconic comic artists such as Simon Bisley and Will Eisner.

Upon leaving Newman High School, Adam undertook a four-year apprenticeship with BHP at Mount Newman, Pilbura, W.A. However, he loathed being a diesel fitter and left the mine the day he completed his apprenticeship.

He enrolled in Perth’s Northbridge School of Art and Design. But it wasn’t easy to shrug off his Newmanesque appetite for wild behaviour. He never missed classes, but as he frequently turned up drunk or stoned, he didn’t learn much. He left after just one year.

There followed 4 years of hard yakka as a commercial artist and illustrator. The money rolled in, and with it, newfound confidence. Adam quit partying, got himself clean, and focussed on building a career.

In 2002, he used his trade qualifications to get a gig at Sydney’s Fox Studios, working on the feature film Star Wars Episode 3. However it wasn’t the conceptual role he’d hoped for. He was back in on the power tools, but this time instead of rebuilding humungous trucks for BHP, he was constructing spacecraft for George Lucas.

In 2004, he worked on Narnia, the Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe. Next up was a job as sculptor on Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

After returning to Sydney in 2005 to work on the film Superman Returns, Adam began concept drawings for a series of totemic paintings on retired surfboards.

His first show, which he organised himself, was at Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club in October 2006. That show sold out and generated numerous commissions. He followed up six months later with show at blank_space gallery in Sydney’s Surry Hills in May 2007, which also sold out.

Bevan Hudson, owner of Sydney’s upmarket Rushcutter’s Bay Gallery, saw Adam’s work at blank_space and offered him a one-man show. Bevan also brokered the sale of one of Adam’s paintings to the top international stylist doing the interiors for the landmark Lumiere apartment development in inner city Sydney.

The November 08 show at Rushcutter’s Bay Gallery was a great success: prices were double what they were at blank-space and Adam’s work was exposed to a much wider audience. Buyers came from the big end of town and included merchant bankers and businesspeople.

Adam’s next show is at The ArtHouse, 275 Pitt Street, Sydney, from 21 July to 16 August 2008.