Doug Braithwaite | Fine Art

Artist Statement

Painting for me, feels like composing and playing music. I look for rhythm and tempo created by the geometry of space. I think of tone and pitch when I work out the color and value relationships. I think of interpretation and feeling as I use my tools to manipulate the color atmospheres and spatial relationships.

I paint my life experiences. I paint the deserts, the pastoral landscapes, the mountains and the urban landscapes of winter, spring, summer and fall. I paint all the places I encounter as I travel. I am very interested in expressing what life is like here and now.

I often wonder what it is that causes me to stop and take note of something long enough that I pull out my paints and attempt to express that feeling. Right now, it is an intuitive feeling that I think has to do with rhythm, space relationships, and maybe genetic triggers. I cannot always express in words what it is, but I feel something about it. I find that this emotion only happens when I am out in the landscape. When I look at photographs, I am not compelled in the same way.

While painting outside, I feel heat, cold, wind, sun, bugs, as well as the visual experience. All these emotions, I hope, are translated into my work. I do paint in my studio because larger paintings require more time, which is not something that is available when working plein air. While painting plein air, I take digital photos of the area with the idea that having had the experience and a pronounced memory because of the concentrated observations while working outside, I can then go back to the studio with my study, color and emotional reference, as well as the digital photos, and work on larger paintings that require longer efforts.

I have lived in the suburbs all my life, but I have spent a lot of time exploring the western states. Plein air painting is a religious experience for me. In my contemplations of the big picture and how everything has come to be, I try to see and paint the relationship between our modern life and life before all the conveniences of our world came to be.

The visual landscape stirs my soul in ways that I can only hope to express. I experience the landscape as both beautiful and as a place that is uncaring, unfeeling and hostile. It is that combination of feelings that makes this subject so interesting.

My experiences outside somehow give me a glimpse of life before air conditioning. I see a causational relationship between the beautiful but harsh environment and our modern world--why we live in houses, drive cars, or talk on phones. Like somehow the experiences that our ancestors had as they lived and evolved in this landscape influence our very thoughts and feelings today in ways that we do not always understand or acknowledge. The necessity to survive has caused us to become intelligent and inventive, and by working through the environmental challenges, we have become who we are today.

Painting the landscape, for me, is about awe, wonder and learning respect. It is also about understanding and recognizing our efforts to exist and flourish.

Education

Formal: University of Utah; 1986-1991
Bachelors of Fine Art with painting and drawing emphasis

Studied Under: Paul Davis, Dave Dornan, Tony Smith, Doug Snow, Ed Maryon
Painting, drawing, figure, monoprints

Juried Awards & Shows

Director's Choice & 3rd Place - Estes Park Plein Air Competition, Estes Park, CO September, 2009
1st Place - Wasatch Plein Air Paradise, Midway, UT July, 2009
1st Place - River Rocks Plein Air Competition, Idaho Falls, ID June, 2009
1st Place - Ogden Plein Air Quick Draw, June 2009
3rd Place -Ogden Plein Air Competition, June, 2009
2nd Place - Helper Plein Air Competition, 2008
1st Place - Ogden Plein Air Competition, 2007
Honorable Mention - Springville Museum of Art Spring Salon, 2007
Merit Award - Plein Air New Mexico 2005
$5,000 Purchase Award - Deseret News, Color of the Land, 2005
1st Place Eccles Center Black & White Competition, 2004
Mayor’s Purchase Award - Art & Soup, 2004
1st Place - Vernal Plein Air Painting Competition, 2004
1st Place Purchase Award - Everett Ruess Plein Air Painting Competition (Escalante, UT) 2004
3rd Place - Helper Plein Air Painting Competition, 2003
Honorable Mention - Deseret News Color of the Land, 2002 and 2003
1st Place - Helper Plein Air Painting Competition, 2002
Honorable Mention - Plein Air Painting Competition, 2001
3rd Place - Springville Museum of Art Spring Salon, 1997
Honorable Mention - springville Museum of Art Spring Salon - 1996

Shows & Exhibitions

Idaho Falls Museum of Art, Two-Man Show with Brad Slaugh (October, 2009)
Rogoway Gallery, Tubac, AZ - Two-Man Show (November, 2008)
Terzian Gallery - One Person Exhibit (February, 2008)
Wilkerson Fine Art - One Person Exhibit (October, 2007)
Eccles Center – One Person Exhibition (June 2007)
Torrey Gallery – One Person Exhibition (June 2006)
Terzian Gallery – One Person Exhibition (February 2006)
Gallery at the Station, Ogden, UT (October 2005)
Rogoway Gallery, Tubac, AZ (February 2005)
Coda Gallery in Park City (2001 & 2004)
Wilkerson’s Art Center in Huntsville, UT (2002)
Phillips Gallery (2000)
Torrey Gallery (1999)
Boise State University (1996)

Publications

Featured in Utah's Painters of Deserts and Canyons, 2009
Featured in American Art Collector Magazine, February 2008
Featured in Southwest Art Magazine, April 2007
Cover of Park City Magazine, Winter 2006 Issue
Feature Article in Southwest Art Magazine, November 2003

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