🎨Opening Reception and Birthday Party This Friday! 🎂

Patrick Smith at WheelHouse Art, LOU

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PATRICK SMITH at WheelHouse Art, LOU

PATRICK SMITH: Full Sized Bigger Work
Opening Reception & Birthday Celebration:
Friday, May 22, 6:00 – 8:00 PM, Conversation with the artist 7:00 PM

WheelHouse Art, LOU
2650 Frankfort Ave
Louisville, KY 40206

Also exhibiting: un-still, a new collection of work by Shawn Marshall, plus collections by Carlos Gamez de Francisco, Emily Church, Megan Bickel, and more.

Exhibition on view May 22 – July 4, 2026

WheelHouse Art is pleased to present Full Sized Bigger Work, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Lexington-based artist Patrick Smith.

Known for his striking realism and psychologically charged imagery, Smith is one of the most compelling figurative painters working in the region today. His acrylic-on-paper works demonstrate an exceptional command of realism while engaging with complex themes around identity, intimacy, and mortality.

What makes Smith’s work especially significant is its clear connection to the historical lineage of figurative painting. His practice draws from traditions established in ancient Greek and Roman art and later refined during the Renaissance, where the human body served as a primary vehicle for exploring both aesthetic and philosophical ideas. Like those earlier artists, Smith approaches the figure with seriousness and intention, treating it as a site of meaning rather than decoration.

At the same time, his work is unmistakably contemporary. The presence of tattoos, modern styling, and intimate subject matter situates these paintings firmly within today’s cultural landscape. This duality of historical grounding paired with contemporary relevance positions Smith’s work as both accessible and intellectually engaging.

Smith has built a strong and steadily growing exhibition record, including institutional and gallery exhibitions across the United States and internationally. His work has already gained recognition within the Lexington and Louisville art communities, and there is clear potential for broader national visibility.

For collectors, these works offer an opportunity to acquire pieces that are both technically accomplished and conceptually resonant that will continue to hold their relevance over time. They are as much about the enduring tradition of figurative art as they are about the complexities of contemporary life.

CHECK OUT 10 (OR SO) QUESTIONS WITH PATRICK SMITH

Also exhibiting: un-still by Shawn Marshall

"My work examines how femininity is constructed through architecture, material culture, and systems of power and display. Informed by my background in architecture, I approach collage as a form of spatial assembly. I build hand-cut layered environments that function as thresholds, vitrines, and compressed sites of desire, and I am interested in how gendered identities are rehearsed and how beauty circulates as both an invitation and a constraint.

"My recent works engage the tradition of the still life as a site of concealed meaning. What initially reads as lush and ornamental abundance, cascading blooms drawn from the Dutch vanitas tradition, reveals itself on closer inspection to be a more unsettling anatomy. Women's bodies are fragmented, miniaturized, and absorbed into the floral arrangements: figures nestle inside blooms like ornaments, legs emerge upended from bouquets, forms are engulfed and reduced to decorative element. Scattered throughout are fragments of commercial culture, from pharmaceutical advertising to convenience store signage, tucked into the botanical splendor like uninvited guests. The irregular shaped panels themselves participate in this logic, their organic contours mimicking the very excess they contain. By folding these elements into the familiar language of beauty and floral abundance, the work exposes what that language has always obscured: the staging, display, and consumption of the female form as aesthetic object." -- Shawn Marshall

Shawn Marshall is a Kentucky-based mixed media artist with a background in architecture and design. She earned a Master of Architecture with a Minor in Fine Art from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kentucky. She is also a visual arts educator who earned Master of Art in Teaching from Bellarmine University.

Shawn Marshall's work has garnered both national and international recognition, with features in Curatory Art Magazine, Visionary Art Magazine, Create! Magazinee, Suboart Magazine, Contemporary Collage Magazine, and others. In the summers of 2024 and 2025, she completed residencies with the Jen Tough Gallery in Santa Fe, which culminated in a solo exhibition in November of 2024. She also exhibited with the Jen Tough Gallery at the 2026 LA Art in January. Marshall has also received multiple Artist Enrichment Grants from the Great Meadows Foundation, the most recent of which supported her travels to Venice, Italy, to attend the 2024 Biennale.

CHECK OUT 10 (OR SO) QUESTIONS WITH SHAWN MARSHALL

Patrick Smith and Shawn Marshall Pre Sale