It’s my birthday this week (August 29)…I turn 52 this year!
To celebrate, I’m offering $52 off all of my drawings 2017-present (reg $325) -AND/OR- all drawings 2016 and earlier, plus some other works on paper are only $52ea.
Take $52 off any drawing you see here
All works pictured below on this page are $52
(plus applicable shipping)
Questions? Email me!
SUPPORT THIS PROJECT BY DOWNLOADING THE MUSIC AND ART AT THE LINK ABOVE ($20)
On February 26, 2020 I began to make and present the painting/music suite "Forty, For You.” The idea was designed as an opportunity to give someone a contemplative experience within the endless/mindless Instagram scroll. Each day for 40 days I created and released an image accompanied by an original ambient music composition.
Shortly after the project began it took on an unforeseen significance, unfolding against the backdrop of the global coronavirus pandemic. The 40-day nature of the work corresponded to the idea of quarantine, with hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home. I received many responses from people telling me the color and music experience was something they looked forward to each day. As I look back on that forty day period of making the paintings, composing and performing music, I recognize it was definitely sustaining me as well.
Though the project was introduced virtually, I also intended for it to work as an in-person experience.
The series made its physical debut earlier this year in an intimate niche gallery as part of my exhibition "Douglas Witmer -- Call & Response" which recently closed at the Midwest Museum of American Art in Elkhart IN.
Now I'm very pleased to make the series available for in-person viewing in Philadelphia. Please join me to experience "Forty, For You" in a beautifully day-lit room at a location just down the street from my West Philadelphia studio. RSVP is not required, but it is helpful info for me.
FORTY FOR YOU, Philadelphia pop-up exhibition
May 20-21, 1-5 pm
Studio 303
4111 Lancaster Avenue Philadelphia
Douglas Witmer--Call and Response
January 13 - March 5, 2023
I will present an artist talk on Thursday, February 2, and be in attendance for the Museum's Winter Party on Friday, February 3.
Here is the Museum press release:
The exhibition “Douglas Witmer – Call and Response” is a multi-faceted project that highlights the artist’s recent work, while demonstrating the integral relationship between an artist and a museum and the dialogues artists form with art that comes before them. For this exhibition, the Museum invited Witmer to curate works from the collection to be installed in conversation with his work. Witmer created several new large-scale paintings for this show. And the Museum is proud to publicly debut Witmer’s major 2020 work “Forty, For You,” a 40-piece suite of paintings and original music compositions intended as a contemplative experience.
Witmer’s relationship to The Midwest Museum of American Art began in the early 1990s when, as a student at Goshen College, he met, studied-under and occasionally assisted MMAA director Brian Byrn, forming an ongoing friendship. Since then Witmer has become internationally-known within the field of reductive abstract painting, steadily pursuing what he calls “a personal inquiry” into the materiality of the painted object.
Regarding his recent work, Witmer says, “My enduring subject is the exploration of painted presence. I consider each painting a unique place offering an open invitation into a contemplative experience of seeing and feeling. I achieve this using a highly process-driven approach within the framework of a kind of formalist abstraction. I activate elemental compositions with sensuous color and improvised and incidental actions. Working in thin watery layers, I establish rectilinear structures that I subject to accident-like situations where resulting marks cannot be expected or anticipated. The fluidity of the paint and my process sets up challenging dynamics of control and release. In my painting I calibrate the tension of these dynamics towards expressive outcomes.”
The studio is currently overflowing with new work in progress that I'm looking forward to completing. Upcoming over the next few months are an open studio and a solo museum show. Read on!
YOU'RE INVITED!
OPEN STUDIO & PARTY
In October, please join me at my studio in West Philadelphia. I will debut brand-new larger scale paintings and I'm planning some other surprises as well.
INVITE-ONLY STUDIO PARTY
Saturday October 15, 7-10pm
REQUEST INVITE for more details
OPEN STUDIO - as part of Philadelphia Open Studios Tour 2022
Sunday October 16, noon-6pm
UPCOMING MUSEUM SOLO
Douglas Witmer : Call & Response
The Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart IN
January 13 -- March 5, 2023
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This is a very exciting project for me on several fronts. It achieves a big goal for me as the Museum will present my art-and-music suite "Forty, For You" (2020) in physical form to the public. Additionally I have been invited to co-curate artworks from the museum's collection which will be installed in dialogue with brand new work created for the exhibition. More details forthcoming.
Typewritten statement revised between 2000-2005.