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Barclay Sheaks Collection Online
Revamped website and digital collection of Barclay Sheaks' work showcase artist's contributions to the College and the community
News Release | April 8, 2016
Many visitors and members of the Virginia Wesleyan College campus community have paused to admire the windswept landscapes and striking portraits of “watchers” that adorn the walls of the light-filled space on the first floor of Godwin Hall known as the Barclay Sheaks Gallery.
One of two art galleries on campus, the Sheaks Gallery is dedicated exclusively to showcasing the work of nationally renowned painter and founder of the Art Department at Virginia Wesleyan College, Barclay Sheaks.
Following his retirement from Virginia Wesleyan in 2006, Sheaks donated approximately 50 of his paintings to the College for the establishment of a permanent gallery. The Gallery displays works from the Virginia Wesleyan collection on a rotating basis.
For the first time, the works in this permanent collection can now be viewed online via the recently redesigned Gallery website, which includes a page dedicated to the Barclay Sheaks Collection and links to a Flickr album with high-resolution images of each of the pieces in the collection along with dates, titles and other label information. These works are copyrighted by Virginia Wesleyan College but are available for viewing and sharing for personal use.
The revised website also features an updated Barclay Sheaks biography, a PDF of the catalog from the 1935-2000 Retrospective Exhibit of his work and a tribute written by Teresa Annas ’76 for the Virginian-Pilot following Sheaks’ death in 2010.
As a professional artist, Sheaks is best known for his acrylic paintings of waterfront scenes, wetlands, farmlands and people of the Chesapeake Bay, and his work has appeared in distinguished museum, university, corporate and private art collections worldwide.
Sheaks taught on the Virginia Wesleyan faculty for 36 years, retiring as Associate Professor and Distinguished Artist in Residence in 2006. He had a profound and lasting effect not only on the arts community but on the many students he inspired and mentored.