Douglas Witmer
Reviews/Interviews
Podcast interview in conjunction with "I Walk the Line--Three Abstract Artists in the 21st Century" by Li Koo
Produced by the University of Maryland, College Park, March 2007.
Listen...
"A Vigilant Turn from Complacency" by Vittorio Colaizzi
Exhibition review of "Contemplations," Red Door Gallery, Richmond VA. January 2007.
Decoration haunts abstraction, pacifying its disruptive potential so that it may be assimilated into "the arts." The best paintings are embodied visual thinking, and we think them every bit as much as we see them. Decoration, on the other hand, is not thought but recitation, the expert assemblage of various tropes for a handsome effect. This dialectic has nothing to do with style or technique, and cannot be simplified as "rough" vs. "slick." Nor is this distinction intended to denigrate all pattern-based abstraction, which can sometimes be a corrective to stagnant conventions. Decoration occurs when a viewer is told what he or she wants to hear, and abstraction occurs when comfort is refused. The distinction is rarely clear, and viewers will always disagree on what constitutes mere repetition and what constitutes adventurous dwelling in the unfamiliar. Douglas Witmer incorporates the very opposition of decoration vs. thought, or recitation vs. discovery, into his paintings, and makes it a part of our experience. Read more...
Catalogue Introduction and Interview for "Spotlight : Douglas Witmer" by Chris Ashley
Published on-line by Minus Space, December 2005.
Douglas Witmer makes paintings with a purpose. I mean this in two ways--he makes paintings purposefully, and his paintings have a purpose. This is not to say in the least that his paintings are predetermined and strictly didactic. Despite their apparently structured appearance they are expressive rather than merely planned and executed, and porous rather than closed in meaning. Read more...