My work is abstract. It emerges from a metaphysical space where various ideas come together by using subjective action (the addition and subtraction of drawing, printmaking, and/or collage) to engage a range of ideas and communicate their interconnectedness. With ideas ranging from science (the human body, botany, micro and macrocosms), informational graphics (maps, trails, pathways) to the traditional elements of art (line, form, textures/patterns, and color), I interpret these seemingly different themes visually by using the logic of musical interpretation. This is achieved by playing off visual similarities, and using free association to guide the work process. Visual cues become a way to see and understand a “felt” world. Each work is an intimate orchestration that takes the viewer on a fluid journey, each work implies a real place where abstract/mechanical marks can stand in for organic elements and where the visual can be a portent of the actual. Visual metaphors abound and are there to engage the viewer with the recognized, familiar, unique, curious, similar and dissimilar. As each piece develops, the search for the particular meter, dynamic, harmony and/or discord, merges with the melody and texture of that piece, as they merge with visual ideas.
LJ DouglasArtist's Statement
LJ Douglas is an American artist working in painting and printmaking. She received a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1975 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977. Her life long study of music influences her work as a visual artist.
L J Douglas’s works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.: Brooklyn Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Brinton Museum, Big Horn, WY, as well as other significant public and private collections.
Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art News, New Art Examiner, Dialogue Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, and The Chicago Reader.
As well as exhibiting her work nationally and internationally, Douglas has written art criticism for “The New Examiner” and “Dialogue” Magazine.
She has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of IL Champaign Urbana, Illinois State University, and currently teaches at Illinois Wesleyan University, and Heartland Community College.
The artist lives and works in Bloomington, IL.