Wheelden was born in Ontario (California) and has lived in San Diego since the ’70s and has taught at Grossmont College since the ’90s...says about his work “My early work was very strongly colored, almost expressionist. It was still frontal, still architectural, but brighter. But in this suite of paintings, I wanted to calm them down a bit. I wanted them to be kind of washed in light, to be expressive of desert colors.” (U-T San Diego, Dec. 15, 2011)