Doug Wright was born in Ballarat in 1944. Between
1963 - 1964 he studied at Ballarat School of Mines
Art School and in 1965 - 1966 at Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology, resulting in a Diploma of
Art (Fine Art Painting). From 1974 he has had over
20 solo exhibitions and in 1993 a survey exhibition,
which travelled Victorian Regional Galleries.
Doug Wright is now a full-time painter having
retired as Senior Lecturer in charge of Painting at
The University of Ballarat.
His early training was in traditional landscape
painting, predominantly in watercolour: over the
years and since working in oil, there has been a
gradual refinement of those early approaches and a
general move towards abstraction and the 'field'
works where the complexity of surface marks creates
an atmosphere.
Doug finds atmosphere very important in establishing
a mood in the work. This can shift subtly from
painting to painting by the gradual shift of
colours. The
complex layered paint surfaces enables Doug to
control the luminosity and translucency of the paint
which in turn alters the atmospheric feel of the
work.
In more recent years, the time spent working in both
Scotland and Australia has made it clear how
important a feel of the space that surrounds and
envelops you, impacts noticeably on the way ideas
are borne out in painting. Light, atmosphere, the
energy of people, the this and that of memory
transform the appearance of art; in other words it
is the way ideas are magnified and clarified. How
your actual
being is signified in the painting.
The creation of meaning in the work hangs by a
delicate thread, bound up in paint, the metaphors of
signs and symbols, all attempting to make a conduit
complete between the artist, the painting and the
spectator. I sometimes refer to this as the fragile
triangle.
[From the
artist's website]
Featured
Exhibitions
2013
Now and Then: 40 Years of Painting
2011 Mixed Exhibition
2006 ARTSingapore
2005 ARTSingapore
Home. 2013, oil on linen, 102 x 112 cm
Blue Gum. 2009, diptypch, encaustic on
linen, 112 x 123 cm