Gregory Thielker is an American painter recognized for his immersive, hyper-realist canvases that depict the world as seen through rain-covered car windows, where highways and urban environments dissolve into softened, atmospheric distortions. His work transforms everyday travel into complex visual fields in which clarity and ambiguity coexist, shifting between documentary precision and painterly abstraction.
Technically accomplished and conceptually focused, Thielker’s practice engages with perception, movement, and mediated vision, using weather, glass, and reflection as tools to destabilize the act of looking. His paintings have gained significant attention from collectors and institutions for their ability to translate ordinary experiences into images that balance psychological depth with visual intensity.
Exhibition:
Looks Can Kill
Selected Awards, Fellowships & Residencies
2017 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency, Amherst, Virginia | 2016 La Tunca Foundation Residency and Site Project, Argentina | 2015 Ucross Foundation Residency, Wyoming | 2015 La Tunca Foundation Residency, El Salvador | 2013–2014 MUSE Fellowship, The College of New Jersey | 2010–2011 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Award, Council for International Exchange of Scholars | 2011 Hybrid Art Projects Residency, El Zonte, El Salvador | 2010 Sanskriti Kendra Residency Fellowship, Delhi, India | 2010 American Scandinavian Foundation Artist Grant | 2010 Royal Norwegian Embassy in Washington, DC, Artist Grant | 2010 Sandarbh International Residency, Rajasthan, India | 2009 Neerja Modi International Art Camp Fellowship, Jaipur, India | 2009 Saint Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award | 2004 Stonehouse Residency for the Contemporary Arts, Miramonte, California
Education
2005 Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, MFA in Painting | 2002 Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, BA in Art History with Honors
Guest Lectures
2018 Watson Institute, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island | 2015 Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania | 2015 University of Colorado, Boulder | 2015 Scripps College, Claremont, California | 2015 Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania | 2014 Bennington College, Vermont | 2014 Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire | 2014 George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia | 2013 American University, Washington, DC | 2013 George Washington University, Washington, DC | 2012 University of Connecticut, Storrs | 2012 The College of New Jersey | 2010 College of Art, Delhi University, India | 2010 Tajasvini Mahila College, Rajasthan, India | 2009 Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston | 2009 Bowdoin College, Maine | 2007, 2012 Whitman College, Washington | 2006 Clark University, Massachusetts | 2004, 2005 Culver-Stockton College, Missouri
Professional Experience
2012–2015 Assistant Professor of Art, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, New Jersey | 2006–2009 Adjunct Studio Art Professor, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts
Gregory Thielker approaches painting as a means of conveying not only a place, but also the mood and emotional resonance of encountering it. Working from direct observation and photographic references, his paintings often take weeks or months to complete. Travel plays a central role in his practice, and various projects have taken him to India, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and along the entire US–Mexico border.
His paintings reflect an ongoing interest in the ways roads shape, define, and control our experience of landscape. From the perspective of the roadway, travel becomes more than movement between destinations; it becomes a complex visual encounter with the environments we pass through. The landscape is continuously framed, interrupted, and transformed by the conditions of travel itself.
Water on the windshield serves as a shifting lens through which the environment is viewed. It simultaneously reveals and obscures, creating a dynamic visual field where clarity and distortion coexist. Through these images, Thielker explores the relationship between perception, movement, and memory. The paintings emerge from lived experience and maintain a close connection to the material and observational possibilities of painting.
Solo Exhibitions
2025 “When Light Breaks”, Square One Gallery, St. Louis | 2025 “The Last Hour”, Galerie Diego Escobar, Marseille | 2025 “A Map of Hours”, Square One Gallery, St. Louis | 2024 “The Liquid Night”, Guy Hepner Gallery, New York | 2023 “Under the Unminding Sky”, Guy Hepner Editions, New York | 2023 Le Feuvre & Roze, Paris | 2022 Guy Hepner Editions, New York | 2018 “The Wall”, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University | 2017 “The Wall”, Schiltkamp Gallery, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts | 2017 “Unmeasured”, Castor Gallery, New York | 2016 “Between Here and Now”, Castor Gallery, New York | 2015 “(Un)governed Spaces”, Schmucker Gallery, Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania | 2014 “(Un)governed Spaces”, Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Vermont | 2013 “Highway”, Flashpoint Gallery, Washington, DC | 2013 “(Un)governed Spaces”, Galerie Derouillon, Paris | 2010 “Spring Solos”, Arlington Art Center, Arlington, Virginia
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 “Looks Can Kill”, Suburbia Contemporary, Barcelona | 2024 “Winter”, Galerie Diego Escobar, Marseille | 2024 Galerie Geraldine Zberro, Paris | 2018 “Unseasonable Expectations”, Nurture Nature Center, Easton, Pennsylvania | 2018 “Natural Proclivities”, Shirley Fiterman Art Gallery, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York | 2018 “Strenuous”, Castor Gallery, New York | 2018 “Liminal Worlds”, curated by Katerina Lanfranco, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, New York | 2016 “Segundo Gran Bienal Tropical”, Piñones, Puerto Rico | 2016 “Finally”, Castor Gallery, New York | 2016 “Centennial Exhibition”, Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, Bronx, New York | 2016 “Summer Show of New York Artists”, Coburn Projects, London | 2016 “Plein Air Painting”, Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, Bronx, New York | 2016 “Plan de Evasión”, La Tunca Foundation Project Room, ArteBA Art Fair, Buenos Aires | 2016 “Rutas de Escape / Nuevas Cartografías”, El Mirador Espacio, Buenos Aires | 2016 “(Un)governed Spaces”, Aligarh University, Uttar Pradesh, India | 2015 “Seeing the Elephant”, Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston | 2014 “Road Trip: The American Landscape through the Windshield”, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Vermont | 2014 “Select”, Washington Project for the Arts, Artisphere Gallery, Washington, DC | 2013 “Dialogue: Past, Present, Future”, The College of New Jersey Art Gallery, Ewing, New Jersey | 2013 “Art With Atmosphere”, Arizona Children’s Museum, Mesa, Arizona | 2012 “Washington Realism”, Carroll Square Gallery, Washington, DC | 2011 “Wet Paint”, Southern Ohio Museum of Art, Portsmouth, Ohio | 2011 “On the Road”, Arlington Art Center, Arlington, Virginia | 2011 “Drive By”, Project 4 Gallery, Washington, DC | 2010 “The Roads They Traveled”, Arthuna Temple Site, Rajasthan, India | 2009 “Seven Perspectives”, Peter Stremmel Gallery, Reno, Nevada | 2009 “Introductions”, Hidell Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina | 2008 Bridge Art Fair, Miami | 2008 “On the Street”, Kingston Gallery, Boston | 2008 Arthouse, Lowell, Massachusetts | 2007 Holyoke Center Exhibitions, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts | 2007 Susan Eley Fine Art, New York | 2006 “Particular Places”, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, Connecticut | 2005 Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York | 2005 “Red”, University Place Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts