The Curious Case of Colors
Preview
Medium
acrylic paint, acrylic screen ink, alkyd oil paint on Mylar
Artist Biography
After Graduating from The University of Texas, Douglas taught at the University of Kansas for three years, before moving to New York in 1969. While living, and working in New York, Douglas showed his work at the Paula Cooper Gallery, Whitney Museum Resources Center, The Clocktower, John Weber Gallery and Jack Tilton Gallery, along with solo exhibitions in Paris, Verona, Stockholm and Munich. Douglas returned to Cleveland in 1991 to teach at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Kent State University. He has shown his paintings at the William Busta Gallery: 1993, 1995, 2007, 2009 and 2013. His selected awards include: 2012 Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award 2005 / 2009 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award 1990 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 1981 National Endowment for the Arts Grant New York State Creative Arts Public Service Program Fellowship Douglas is presently Adjunct faculty in Foundation at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland Ohio. I want to credit Christi Birchfield and Zygote Press for their skillful contribution to the success of this project.
Artist's Statement
After taking a couple years off away from the studio... I promised myself I would begin again... and make paintings as sensuous and generous as my summer garden 2016.
I thought the climate of my Hampshire Road garden had potential for commitment and pleasure. A pleasure maintained by a soil of mixed chemistry and a harvest of unique taste... texture and color. How better can we celebrate the 'flower of life’?
The background pattern within this new series of paintings serves as a memory of 'invented and arcane' iconography. A processing of motifs that symbolize and clearly represents a cognitive process that Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan described as 'dynamic equilibrium'.
The drafting and processing of the background imagery is also reinvented through color juxtaposition. The ability of hue and simultaneous contrast to change our perception of form.
The center 'ladder' figuration references the Watson-Crick DNA structure. I selected and favor this geometric color coded 'ladder structure' as a synergistic and expressive metaphor.