Wendell Gladstone’s figurative paintings evoke dream-like spaces, free from the logic that typically governs traditional representation. Utilizing allegory and metaphor to examine a wide swath of cultural references—from art history to contemporary politics and personal experience—his works allow the subconscious to guide their narratives.

Gladstone interrogates the hierarchical struggle among a cast of characters as they cycle through chronicles of rapture, unrest, and revolt, surveying the boundless energy of the human psyche. With a bright, often candy-colored palette layered with transparent gel mediums that subtly reveal the forms beneath, as though behind glass, his works immediately seduce the viewer and only later reveal psychologically charged subtexts.