Douglas Witmer: Field + stream

Exhibition Dates: April 28 - May 23, 2009

Reception: Saturday, May 2, 5 - 7 pm

Since the late 1990s, Douglas Witmer’s paintings demonstrate an increasingly distilled sensibility related to surface and color. Intuitively combining simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of the surface, his paintings are inquiries into the materiality of seeing, perception, feeling, and memory.In a recently published interview with the Tokyo-based artist Brent Hallard, Witmer said, "I want the present moment of seeing to be charged with the possibility of some kind of change in the next present moment of seeing. I hope for that to activate the sense that you feel yourself seeing. I like to think of these moments as clear, pure, innocent, and solitary. And if you can get to them, then you have, in a way, started an experiential engine for yourself, and your thoughts can begin to move in uniquely personal directions."

The exhibition title "Field + Stream" is taken from the popular hunting and fishing magazine, which the artist often saw as a young boy. This title acknowledges the influence of nature in Witmer’s paintings, and refers to the binary elements in his work: rectangles of dominant color set upon a cascading gray ground. Douglas Witmer holds a B.A. from Goshen College and an M.F.A. from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited internationally. Recent venues include: P.S.1/MoMA, Minus Space, and M55 Art (all in New York City), Pharmaka in Los Angeles, Gallery Siano in Philadelphia, The University of Maryland, The University of Dayton in Ohio, Sydney Non-Objective in Australia, and Bus-Dori Project Space in Tokyo, Japan. He lives and works in Philadelphia. More information: www.douglaswitmer.com