Petroglyphe Gallery, 8317 Main St., Mokelumne Hill, celebrates the innovative creations of Doug Lawler with his Light and Motion Show, A Study in Light, Movement and Color, starting at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 26 and running through Sunday, Dec. 14 until 4 p.m. An opening reception in his honor will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. on opening day, Oct. 26, with Metzger Family Wines and light appetizers. There will be a free drawing for a $100 gift certificate to the gallery at the end of the reception.
“The gallery has been displaying Doug’s drypoint prints since opening in 2011, and his work has become very popular with customers,” said Denise Ebbett, gallery owner. “We are really excited about this show as it is an opportunity to display his oil pastels, which is a newer direction for him.”
Lawler will be teaching a special workshop, Oil Pastels: A Study of Possibility, on Saturday, Nov. 1 from 1 to 5 p.m. for all levels of artists in the gallery’s adjacent Quarry Hill Studio. Cost is $85 with a $45 material fee to the instructor.
“My work centers around the study of what I call ‘complex color,’” he shared. “Color in nature is really a composite of environmental elements. We are capable of perceiving many things with our eyes. Light changes our perception of color – light can reflect, penetrate or transmit through surfaces. When we observe color, we are really seeing layers of interconnected influences, each adding an element to the whole.”
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Lawler started his art career with oil painting. At a young age he was involved in group showings and eventually one man shows in the Detroit area. As a young artist he was intrigued with the romance of painting in the tropics and found himself living in Hawaii where he eventually had several one-man art shows including showings at The Gallery of Fine Arts (Hilo) and the Unitarian Gallery (Honolulu). After winning the top prize in the Hilo art fair two years in a row, the state purchased one of his paintings to add to their collection at the Hawaii State Art Museum in Honolulu.
The allure of the ‘60s brought Doug to the San Francisco Bay Area where he had several one-
man shows and was an invited artist at the San Francisco Art Festival. During this time he founded a printmaking collective in Berkeley where he, for several years, was involved in designing and printing anti-war leaflets and posters.
During the 1970s, Lawler traveled to a tiny Mexican fishing village, Yelapa, where he lived and produced a series of pastel drawings that were later exhibited in the U.S. He eventually moved to Spain where, for 12 years he worked and exhibited in numerous galleries such as The Galeria La Cortina in Barcelona, The Galeria Internacional in Ibiza, and Galeria Torres Begue and Galeria Kandinski in Madrid. He also worked as a freelance illustrator and was published in several periodicals in Barcelona.
Upon his return to the United States, Lawler became interested in art conservation and worked as a free-lance fine arts conservator for many years at Bay Area museums including the Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. During this time he restored the Jade Pagoda at the Oakland Museum and was awarded a contract for the renovation of the San Francisco Palace of Legion of Honor Museum, including the conservation/installation of the Spanish ceiling.
Over the last 20 years, Lawler has been focusing on dry point print- making in limited and numbered editions. More recently, he has created two new series oil pastels on paper entitled “Painted People” and “The Human Tribe.”
Petroglyphe Gallery, one of the finest art galleries in the Sierra, is open from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. For additional information on all upcoming classes and showings, call 286-1387 or visit www.gallerypetroglyphe.com
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