David A. Douglas: Memory of Place

David A. Douglas: Memory of Place

Friday, July 31, 2026
5 PM Artist Talk moderated by Anke Van Wagenberg, PhD, Senior Curator & Head of International Collaborations at American Federation of Arts
Reception to immediately follow.

Exhibition on view July 25 – September 12, 2026

Zach Gallery
17 S. Washington Street, Easton MD

About the Artist:

David A. Douglas

“Working at the intersection of drawing, painting and photography, David A. Douglas creates large-scale works that explore the power of place. Depicting personally significant landscapes on a monumental scale, Douglas offers the viewer the opportunity to enter his visual world and experience the potency that underlies each moment. Amplifying the inner beauty within the ordinary, Douglas’ works resonate with the intensity of a poem, simply stated yet somehow glowing with life from the inside out.

Although the works appear to be photographs, Douglas' method incorporates drawing and painting techniques as well.  Trained first as a painter, Douglas came to use photography in mid-career, primarily as an offshoot of his work as a teacher. Although he now collects his imagery through a camera lens, his pieces still come into being through a process much more akin to painting. Image fragments are brought together with conscious attention focused on formal compositional elements. While drawn from specific and personally impactful landscapes, a finished work will most likely be made of parts from multiple places at once and is a depiction more of the artists' vision rather than a specific place. In this way, Douglas imbues each scene with a luscious and beautifully confounding incongruity. These qualities are subtle. One has to look closely, but the reward is layered and sublime.

These images tell stories. Large enough to imaginatively enter, the places Douglas creates are deeply grounded in the natural world. But traces of humanity are featured as well, with houses, benches, clotheslines, random debris and even figures sparsely populating the environment. Viewed through a diffuse light, these additions seem both random and purposeful, capturing frozen moments, implying action and meaning, a sense of the past and the future.

As artist and storyteller, Douglas creates markers for viewers to follow. Questions are asked and open-ended answers are thoughtfully posed. What might be happening here?What makes me notice what I notice? What gives meaning to this randomness?  What makes the ordinary extraordinary? Where am I, and how does it feel to be in this place? These works are deeply engaging and elementally familiar, comforting and disquieting, moments of life lived into by artist and viewer alike.

A native of Northern Virginia, Douglas has works in numerous public, private and corporate collections, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Chrysler Museum, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, the Academy Art Museum, and the Georgetown University Collection of Art. His work has been shown in various solo and group exhibitions, including exhibits with Chuck Close, Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Lee Friedlander, Richard Deibenkorn, Alexander Calder, Robert Rauchenberg, Bernice Abbott, Ansel Adams, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others.”

Nancy Sausser
Exhibitions director MPA
Independent Curator

About the Moderator:

Anke Van Wagenberg, PhD is Senior Curator & Head of International Collaborations at the American Federation of Arts. An internationally recognized art historian specializing in Dutch and Flemish painting, she has held curatorial and research positions at the National Gallery of Art, The Walters Art Museum, the Vero Beach Museum of Art, and the Norton Museum of Art. Previously, she served as Chief Curator of the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, where she organized numerous acclaimed exhibitions and expanded the museum's collections and public programs. Van Wagenberg curated the solo exhibition “Intersections” for David A. Douglas at The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington D.C. in 2025. She also curated his 2013 solo exhibition at the Academy Art Museum. Van Wagenberg earned her PhD in Art History from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and is the author of the definitive catalogue raisonné of Jan Baptist Weenix and Jan Weenix.

Image details: “The House in the House” 50 x 65 mixed media on panel 2026

Zach Gallery | 17 S Washington Street
Wednesday - Saturday | 10 AM - 4 PM