Santa Classics is a series of images created by artist, photographer Ed Wheeler. He imagines Santa entering into the great masterworks of art, with humor and reverence for the originals.
Ed Wheeler has researched hundreds of paintings and finds that certain compositions beckon to him for a “Santa intervention.” Often Santa replaces a main figure in a painting; sometimes he is added to a group composition or may even be the single human presence in a landscape. Ed’s intent is to pay homage to the original paintings while offering art lovers an additional reason to smile. Once a painting is selected, he embarks on a multi-step process to fully integrate Santa into the lighting, brushstrokes and tonal values of a particular painting while maintaining the fidelity of the original. It is this attention to detail, lighting and relationships between figures, which lead to another kind of art experience.
For the past thirty years, Ed has photographed people, places and things for some of the most important corporations in America. Ed has shot in 35 countries on five continents. He has shot in a coal mine two miles down, a helicopter 2,000 feet up, on an oil rig far out to sea, and on top of Mt. Whitney. Ed was educated at the Wharton School of Business, and has learned to work through the barriers of language, culture and politics.