Doug Freed | Featured Artist
February 6, 2024
"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."
"My paintings consist of two or more panels. One panel is landscape imagery. The other adjacent panel is often an atmospheric void where vestiges of the recognizable landscape are found. 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, the softness of landscape bathed in fog, and the quieting mood of approaching darkness. My intent is to create paintings imbued with meditative spiritual presence.
I paint on a regular basis, travel internationally and use photos I've taken as sources for my works. I paint with oils landscape vistas of horizons, clouds and bodies of water.
The compositions are about ambiguities of form and void, foreground and background, and surface and deep space. Also, they are about ambiguities of associational images and pure abstraction, referential, and non-referential structures. My sources are often ancient architecture. I am fascinated by archaeological and architectural spaces, particularly their sense of mystery. It is this mystical and mysterious quality I seek in my painted structures. I do this by softly modulating color tone and value to create illusions of emanating light, where one's eyes and spirit are invited to linger."
Jennifer Welch Designs featuring work by Doug Freed.
Douglass Freed’s undergraduate and graduate degrees are from Fort Hays State University. His wife, Nina, is a retired elementary educator. They have four children, two of which are in the arts. Freed is a professional artist represented by galleries in the following USA cities: New York City, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Charleston, St. Louis and Kansas City. He has had over sixty solo exhibitions. His work is in the Missouri museum collections of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, St. Louis Art Museum, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mildred Kemper Museum of Art in Saint Louis, Springfield Museum of Art and the Museum of Art and Archeology at the University of Missouri in Columbia. His work is in the collections of numerous universities and corporations. His work has been commissioned by many corporations, including recently the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Emerson Electric and Sachs Properties in St Louis, Fresenius Medical Care, North America, Waltham, Massachusetts, Ritz Carlton Hotel, Laguna, California as well as several private collectors. He has received grants from the Missouri Arts Council, Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Freed was the Director of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art at State Fair Community College until his retirement in February 2008. He served as the principal advisor to Doctor Daum in assembling his collection of contemporary art for the past thirty-five years. Freed helped build the Daum Museum collection from 200 objects to over 800 since its opening in 2001. He has served as curator for over 50 exhibitions, several of which toured to other museums. Preceding the opening of the Daum, Freed was the Director of the Goddard Gallery and served as the chairman of the art department for many years. He was a board member of the Missouri Arts Council during the mid-1980’s and was involved on many levels with the Missouri Advocates for the Arts which became the Missouri Citizens for the Arts. He created the Missouri Fifty Exhibition for the Missouri Arts Council and continues to chair this special Missouri Arts Council collaborative project, which is in its 20th year, with the Missouri State Fair. He currently is a director on the board of the Mid-America Arts Alliance. He has been active in his community and has served on several boards, including two terms as president of the Sedalia Arts Council of which he was a founding member. His community awarded him the 2005 Star Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. In 2007 he received the Missouri Arts Council’s Leadership in the Arts Award. Proclamations from the Missouri Senate and House of Representatives recognized him for his profound contributions to the cultural and artistic climate of the state.