Wells Chandler: I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together

Wells Chandler is an expanded-field painter whose practice intersects the sacred, idiosyncratic folk traditions and 1970s craft feminism. He explores the entanglement of ecology, community, gender, and queer iconography through the mediums of crochet, embroidery, egg tempera, and cake. Informed by cultural anthropology and comparative religious studies, Chandler weaves the art historical, esoterica, pop culture, and autobiography to stage heterotopias oriented toward collective healing. His process is repetitive and contemplative.  Meditation underlies his hand crafted, labor-intensive, slow practice, embedding time, ritual, and devotion directly into the work. His site-specific, porous paintings—composed of talismanic sigils and guardians—function as living shrines.

Wells Chandler is a Bronx based artist, writer, and curator.  He received his MFA from Yale University in 2011 where he was awarded the Ralph Mayer Prize for proficiency in materials and techniques. Chandler was a 2015 Queer Art Mentorship fellow paired with the inimitable Angela Dufresne. From 2016-17 he was a recipient of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program. He was appointed the Spring 2023 Teiger Mentor of the Arts at Cornell and taught primarily at public institutions for over a decade. Chandler was a Soloway gallery member from 2021-2024.

His work has been written about by Roxane Gay, Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, TimeOut, Modern Painters, Maake Magazine, Two Coats of Paint, and AEQAI.  Chandler is represented by ANDREW RAFACZ (Chicago, IL) and Galerie Eric Mouchet (Paris, FR) + (Brussels, BE).