Brushstrokes: Interview with CoCo Artist Doug F.
Through our new series of interviews, Brushstrokes, we're happy to introduce CoCo Artist, Doug F., a nationally celebrated abstract landscape painter, whose works have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and in private collections throughout the country. Doug's work? Think big, intense, and yet calm.
We sat down with Doug during a very busy time of year for him, just a few weeks before he will be exhibiting at Art Basel in Miami, one of the most premiere art shows in the world.
CoCo: How would you describe your artwork?
Doug: I try to capture the mystical light found in natural atmospheric effects: the haze in the distance on humid summer days, the overcast gloom of winter skies, and the softness of landscape bathed in fog, and the quieting mood of approaching darkness. My intent is to create paintings imbued with a meditative, spiritual presence suggesting issues about time and ecology.
At the studio: Epoch Federal Reserve, diptych, 96"X120", oil on canvas
CoCo: What inspired you to paint these types of landscapes?
Doug: For nearly twenty years, I made non-objective grid structured paintings. I started to see references to landscape in these works. I've literalized those references by painting oil landscape vistas of horizons, clouds and bodies of water. These paintings consist of two or more vertical panels. Usually one panel is landscape imagery. The adjacent panels are often atmospheric voids with vestiges of recognizable landscapes.
My roots lie in tonalism, color field painting and minimalism. However, my work contains an ever-present awareness of the dramatic use of light of the post-renaissance chiaroscurists. It combines a classical awareness of structure with a romantic use of color always in combination with a unique sense of ambiguity.
My work continues in its evolution of style the search for an abstract means of probing the ambiguities of physical and spiritual experience of light, and its power to foster a more intense life of the spirit through profound emotional experience of form, color and composition.
Doug's studio
CoCo: Can you lead us though an important aspect of your technique?
Doug: I try to imbue my work with a monumental presence, epic in both size and scope. I do this by orchestrating the separate elements of color, texture and structure into a harmonious whole. I seek a somewhat reductive image rich in value and contrast. The surface of the work is devoid of textural incidence. I don’t want anything to distract from the illusion of depth so I deny any marks which would hold the viewer on the surface of the painting. In my luminescent multi- paneled oil paintings I try to find the grey area between traditional landscape painting and its abstraction into color fields. The compositions are about ambiguities of form and void, foreground and background and surface and deep space.
CoCo: What are you currently working on?
Doug: "Seascapes." The painting is done in separate panels which creates the triptych. My signature wraps around the edge, and the edge is softened by routering it with a quarter inch roundoff bit. This becomes an essential part of the whole; that is the soft edge, my signature, and the painting wrapping around the stretcher; it all contributes to the finished edge.
Seascapes
At the studio: Seascapes
Doug prices commissions at the higher end of CoCo Gallery's offerings: a medium-sized painting (16"X20" to 24"X36") can range from $2500 to $5000. Of course, commission pricing varies greatly based on the size and details of the particular painting. If you'd like to learn more about Doug and his work, contact info@cocogallery.net.