Just after getting married in the summer of 1995, Rebecca and I moved to Philadelphia. Our first apartment was odd/interesting and cheap. One of the reasons we chose it was for its very small second bedroom which was to be my studio. I found work as an art handler at The Philadelphia Museum of Art and at The Barnes Foundation. At the Barnes in particular, it was pretty incredible to hold a small Cezanne in my hands in the afternoon, then go home and paint later that evening!
At this point I was making work on an easel I bought for myself during my college days, ordered from the Utrecht art supplies catalog. Generally, if I wanted/needed something, I bought the cheapest thing. I remember I didn’t do that for the easel. I splurged to get something a few pegs up the product line. I was pretty proud of that easel. Something about it made painting seem like an “event.” And that’s the way painting continues to feel for me.
Continuing to work with oil paint and thick impasto, I began to approach color more tonally. I’m sure this was because of the influence of Warren Rohrer. I began to think more about “color field” although the work was still small. Warren is my painting hero and I’ve written extensively about him. I was anticipating spending time with him in Philadelphia, however he died a few months before we moved to the city.
Douglas Witmer, New Paintings, The Arts League, Philadelphia, May 1997
Within a few months of settling in Philadelphia, I enrolled in a darkroom photography class at the Arts League right around the corner from our apartment. They had a nice gallery space. I applied for and was given a solo show. In May of 1997, I debuted about a dozen or so new paintings and some works on paper. The image on the exhibition announcement was a painting I titled “After August,” which was a painted response to my dislike of all the Rodins I had to work with at the Barnes. I had a large arrangement of lilacs in the gallery. It was so fragrant.
The two paintings above were both in that exhibition. “Squall” is a painting I’ve kept for myself. “Handlebar” was bought by a friend who still lives in our neighborhood and I get to see it now and again (and borrow it back to photograph).