Douglas Witmer
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
down on the farm
I spent a long weekend painting at the retreat center that is on the farm of my high school art teacher. I'll expand on this post with more images later in the week, but for now, enjoy the above.
Quoting myself here, in an interview with Chris Ashley back in 2005, "To a degree, I have always been an observational painter in that things I see or fragments from things I see undergo a process of distillation in the studio."
Labels: my work, paintings, studio views and work in progress
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Sunday, September 23, 2007
the last day of summer
Some of you know that my job is being the co-owner of The Green Line Cafe, located a few doors down the street from where I live. In late August, I found myself with a small open period of time between exhibits I had scheduled for the cafe. So I decided to fill it by hanging a few of my pieces there. It was the first time I displayed my own work at the cafe. It wasn't really a show. Just a place for a few of my paintings to be for a time. Work like mine is often displayed in fairly pristine environs. So it was good to see these paintings existing in a heavily trafficked public space, in the mix of a lot of other visual information, music, conversation, activity. To me they felt "domesticated"...what I wish for them...to be in relationship to places where people (not viewers) live.
One of the things I was particularly interested in seeing was the paintings with the stained glass windows in the space. When we renovated the cafe space just over five years ago, we restored the uppper set of windows, adding color. I chose and arranged the colors. You might say these windows have become another one of my favorite things. The ideas of transparency and clarity have been prominent in my color and they probably come in part from looking at the light coming through these windows.
Something about taking this work down on Friday afternoon, in the golden light of late September, I felt the summer end for me.
Labels: Green Line Cafe, miscellany, my favorite things, my work, paintings
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Monday, July 02, 2007
news : group show in australia
Untitled, 2006. Gesso and acrylic on unstretched linen, 13.5 x 11 inches (34 x 28 cm)
This piece is soon en route to Sydney, Australia as part of the group exhibition Escape from New York at Sydney Non-Objective. The exhibition is organized by Minus Space, and opens August 3. Each of the artists in the show will be represented by a recent work, and also by an open "letter" to the audience in Sydney. I believe Minus Space will catalogue the entire project on line soon. I'll post the that which made up my "letter" after the show is actually open.
Meanwhile, this unstretched linen piece is the only one that survives from a group I started in 2006 during my residency at St. Mary's College of Maryland. It's kind of a seed idea. I think about it a lot. See the group in progress here, here, and here. Why this one works for me and the others do not...well, that's the question that I've been mulling over for nearly a year and a half now!
Labels: exhibitions, my work, news, paintings, studio views and work in progress
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Wednesday, May 30, 2007
news : corporate sale
Above: Garden Spot, 2006, Manitou, 2006, Monk, 2006, Untitled (brown),2006, Capitolo, 2005. All works acrylic on canvas, 30 x 36 inches.
(click each image to enlarge)
These five recent paintings have entered the corporate collection of Duane Morris LLP. Late last year, the law firm also purchased a set of 10 works on paper from the late 1990s. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Duane Morris LLP has a terrific collection (there's a great Leichtenstein sculpture in front of their office here), and offices all over the world. I was told the 10 works on paper were headed for Singapore. These five canvases may be ending up either in Philadelphia or Baltimore.
Labels: my work, news, paintings
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