Doug Shoemaker Watercolors
Doug Shoemaker: Artist Statement
My work, as a realist painter, explores the richness and complexity of everyday, ordinary objects that surround us in our urban and sometimes suburban environment.
Elements of walls, surfaces, urban objects and building components all become sources of inspiration for my work. Parts of the natural landscape often enter into the work adding counterpoint to architectural objects. Painting in the medium of transparent watercolor, I strive to create images that speak of the larger environment, but offering a closer inspection of the actual object. Sunlight and shadow moving across a surface suggest the constant movement of time, while at the same time offering contemplation and solitude. Often, my work will hint at a larger point of view that I hope the viewer will acknowledge and realize their perception and awareness can help complete the story.
My chosen medium, watercolor on paper offers a unique form of luminosity and quality of light critical to my work. In watercolor, what is left out is often as important as what is put in. That delicate, but difficult balance is challenging, and allows me to push the limits of this very traditional and "old-school" media into producing bold, saturated colors, soft washes combined with sharp edge realism.
A level of abstraction begins to interact with the direct realism of the piece. It takes on focused depth and complexity while remaining grounded in the ordinary.
Professionally trained as an architect I use pencil drawing and my own photography as a beginning point of departure for my work. Through careful editing and cropping of an image a tightly composed painting evolves.
Through the media of watercolor, expressed in a photo-realist manner, my work explores everyday, mundane places in our urban environment.
By tightly editing the composition, based on my own source photography, I seek to express the power and clarity of simplicity.
Walls, edges, architectural components, often abandoned or decaying awash with sunlight and shadow all inspire me to create meaningful images where the ordinary becomes complex, poetic and memorable.