Douglas Witmer

Douglas Witmer will present a studio exhibition of brand new paintings on canvas and paper. Douglas Witmer is internationally known within the field of reductive abstract painting, with numerous exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and beyond.

Witmer’s work manifests decades of inquiry into the materiality of the painted object through refined processes and elemental compositional structures that are activated by sensuous color and various improvised gestural and incidental actions.

The subject is presence--establishing a visual place that offers someone an open invitation for a personal experience of seeing and feeling.

In his recent work, Witmer applies the paint in watercolor-thin layers. From start to finish on a painting, his interactions with the surface are completely additive. Sometimes a wash is cascaded down the entire face of the painting. Other times Witmer introduces structure with flat housepainters’ brushes. And still other times he creates marks in gestural strokes or in ways where resulting marks will be unexpected or unanticipated, such as purposely touching wet paintings against one another. The highly fluid nature of this painting process sets up challenging dynamics of control and release. And Witmer coaxes a wide range of emotional results from his basic approaches.