Doug Ohlson: Works from the 1980s

Doug Ohlson: Works from the 1980s

November 17, 2012 - January 12, 2013

A native of Cherokee, Iowa, Doug Ohlson (1936 – 2010) exchanged the effortless horizons of the Midwest for the bare-knuckles bright lights of New York City in 1961.  Though the city proved to be the ideal springboard for his artwork, something of the artist’s Midwestern sensibility remains.

Ohlson’s large-scale canvasses, fields of opulent color, are sculpted as resolutely as landscape itself.  The sun seems to radiate from inside a wall of fuchsia (Marker California) until a vertical panel of tawny yellow blocks the light.  In each and every canvas, no matter the scale, the artist offers startling re-examinations of shadow and luminescence, breath-taking views of wide-open spaces re-constituted by hard-edged geometry.     

The artist’s work has been widely exhibited and is included in public and private collections, most notably the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery.  A long time faculty member of Hunter College, Ohlson has been the recipient of numerous awards/grants including a Guggenheim fellowship, the New York State Council on the Arts Grant and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant.