WINTER II by artist Doug Freed is a grey, white, and black contemporary abstract landscape made of oil on canvas that measures 24 x 18 and is priced at $2,200.

Doug Freed attempts to capture the mystical light found in natural atmospheric effects: the haze in the distance on humid summer days, the overcast gloom of winter skies, and the softness of landscape bathed in fog, and the quieting mood of approaching darkness. In his luminescent multi-paneled oil paintings Freed tries to find the grey area between traditional landscape painting and its abstraction into color fields.

Artist Statement

For nearly twenty years, I made non-objective grid structured paintings. I started to see references to landscape in these works. I've literalized those references by painting oil landscape vistas of horizons, clouds and bodies of water. These paintings consist of two or more vertical panels. Usually one panel is landscape imagery. The adjacent panels are often atmospheric voids with vestiges of recognizable landscapes.

I try to capture the mystical light found in natural atmospheric effects: the haze in the distance on humid summer days, the overcast gloom of winter skies, and the softness of landscape bathed in fog, and the quieting mood of approaching darkness. My intent is to create paintings imbued with a meditative, spiritual presence suggesting issues about time and ecology. I do this by softly modulating color, tone and value. The color varies from quiet, monochromatic works to fully orchestrated chromatic ones. By blending from one hue to another I create color which makes its self gradually felt, weeping forth. In this manner, I create illusions of mysterious emanations of light, places where ones eyes and spirit are invited to linger.

I try to imbue my work with a monumental presence, epic in both size and scope. I do this by orchestrating the separate elements of color, texture and structure into a harmonious whole. I seek a somewhat reductive image rich in value and contrast. The surface of the work is devoid of textural incidence. I don’t want anything to

distract from the illusion of depth so I deny any marks which would hold the viewer on the surface of the painting. In my luminescent multi- paneled oil paintings I try to find the grey area between traditional landscape painting and its abstraction into color fields. The

compositions are about ambiguities of form and void, foreground and background and surface and deep space.

My roots lie in tonalism, color field painting and minimalism. However, my work contains an ever-present awareness of the dramatic use of light of the post-renaissance chiaroscurists. It combines a classical awareness of structure with a romantic use of color always in combination with a unique sense of ambiguity.

My work continues in its evolution of style the search for an abstract means of probing the ambiguities of physical and spiritual experience of light, and its power to foster a more intense life of the spirit through profound emotional experience of form, color and composition.


SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

K.U. Medical Center, Wichita, KS
Museum of Art & Archeology University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
Hoecht Marion Roussel (Commission), Kansas City, Missouri
FBL Financial Group, Des Moines, IA
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Wichita Center for the Arts, Wichita, Kansas
Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri
The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, Missouri
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Steinberg Collection, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas
College of Architecture and Design, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas
Fort Hays, Kansas State University, Hays, Kansas
Memorial Union Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
Norman R. Eppink Art Gallery, Emporia State University,, Emporia, Kansas
Hutchinson Community College, Hutchinson, Kansas
Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas
Lincoln College, Lincoln, Illinois
State Fair Community College, Sedalia, Missouri
Hallmark Cards Inc., Kansas City, Missouri
Sprint Corporation, Kansas City, Missouri
MacGraw Hill Publishing Co., New York City, New York
Pioneer Hybrid, Des Moines, Iowa
Pella Corporation, Pella, Iowa
Fort Smith Public Library (Commission), Fort Smith, Arkansas
Deloitte & Touche (Commission), St. Louis, Missouri
Publishing Enterprises, Inc. (Commission), Sedalia, Missouri
Parks & Recreation Department, Columbia, Missouri
United Telephone Systems, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri
American Family Doctors, National Headquarters, Kansas City, Missouri
DST Corporation, Kansas City, Missouri
Crown Center, Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, Missouri
Hewlett Packard Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri
Emerson Electric (Commission), St. Louis, Missouri
Mark Twain Bank, Creve Coeur, Missouri
Boone County Bank, Columbia, Missouri
Landmark Bank, Madill, Oklahoma
Septagon Industries (Commission), Sedalia, Missouri
KEO Building Corporation (Commission), Sedalia, Missouri
D & W Leasing, Sedalia, Missouri
1st National Bank, Rockford, Illinois
Mark Twain Bank Shares, Ladue, Missouri
Bank of Olathe, Olathe, Kansas
Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri
Cessna Aircraft Corporation, Wichita, Kansas
Insituform Mid-America, Inc., St. Louis, Missouri
City of Komoro, Komoro, Japan
Municipal Collection, Jasbereny, Hungary
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri
University of Kansas School of Medicine, Wichita, Kansas
American Century Mutual Funds, Kansas City, Missouri
Maytag, Newton, Iowa
SM Energy, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Stillwater National Bank, Tulsa, Oklahoma
H&R Block Inc. Corporation, Kansas City, Missouri
Southern Progress, Publisher of Southern Living Magazine, Birmingham, Alabama
University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Missouri
Federal Reserve Bank (Commission), Kansas City, Missouri
Fresenius Medical Care, North America Waltham, Massachusetts,

Commission

Ritz Carlton Hotel (Commission), Laguna, California
Hilton Hotel (Commission), San Francisco, California
Sachs Properties (Commission), St. Louis, Missouri
Emprise Bank - Kansas Collection, Wichita, Kansas
Shook Hardy and Bacon Law Firm, Kansas City