Douglass Freed captures 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. His intent is to create paintings imbued with meditative spiritual presence.
His 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.
Douglass is the director of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art on the campus of State Fair Community College in Sedalia, Missouri. His studio is a two-floor, 1871 building listed on the national registry, located in the historic downtown.
Sedalia, Missouri is in the center of the state, where the western prairie meets the Ozark highlands. To the west is prairie, to the north is oak and hickory-covered hills and the Missouri River. To the south is the Lake of the Ozarks and the Truman Lake. This environment affords Douglass an unending diversity of landscape. He paints on a regular basis, travels internationally and uses photos he takes as sources for his works. He paints with oils landscape vistas of horizons, clouds and bodies of water.
Douglass Freed, Artist, Museum Director/Curator
Mr. Freed's undergraduate and graduate degrees are from Fort Hays State University in Hays Kansas.He served as the chairperson of the Art Department at State Fair Community College in Sedalia Missouri from1968-2000 and the director of the Goddard Gallery from 1995 to the opening of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in 2001 where he now serves as the full time director\curator.Mr. Freed is a nationally exhibiting artist with over fifty solo exhibitions. In recent years he had a solo museum exhibition at the Wichita Center for the Arts and solo gallery exhibitions in Kansas City at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, in St. Louis at both Elliot Smith Contemporary Art and R. Duane Reed Gallery.In 2004 Mr. Freed paintings were featured in Charleston, South Carolina during the Spoleto Arts Festival at Mary Martin Gallery of Fine Art,at Patrona Frau/Etra Fine Art in Miami during Basil Miami and hisNew York dealer Kathryn Markel showed his work at the Chicago Pier, the San Francisco International Art Fair as well as at her gallery in Chelsea.Also in 2004 he had a solo exhibition in Des Moines at Olson-Larsen Gallery. In 2005 he had solo exhibitions at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in K.C., Lanoue Fine Arts Gallery in Boston and Etra Fine Art in Miami. Also, in 2005 Lanoue Fine Art Gallery is featuring his work in the Boston International Art Fair.In 2006 He had a solo exhibition at Mary Martin Gallery of Fine Art in Charleston during Spoleto and at Anne Loucks Gallery in Chicago. In 2007 he had a solo exhibition at Etra Fine Art in Miami during Febuaury. With future exhibitions planned for November 2007 in San Francisco. Mr. Freed has received artists’ grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid American Arts Alliance, the Missouri Arts Council and Rotary International. His work has been published in over sixty reviews and publications including New American Paintings, The New York Art Review, The New Art Examiner, Art in America, Arts Magazine and the Kansas City Review as well as the Kansas City Star, The St. Louis Tribune and the New York Times.His work is in the collections of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Saint Louis Art Museum, The Springfield Art Museum, The Newark Museum of Art, and Wichita Center for the Arts as well as numerous University museums including the University of Missouri Museum of Art and Archeology and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museumat Washington University in St Louis Missouri.His works are in the collections of and he has been commissioned by numerous corporations. In 2007 he received the Leadership in the Arts Award from the Missouri Arts Council for lifetime achievement in the arts and Proclamations from the Missouri Senate and the Missouri House of Representatives recognizing him for profound and lasting contributions to the cultural climate of Missouri.
Acclaimed landscape painter Doug Freed of Sedalia, Missouri has always produced large-scale works. His paintings are in the collections of numerous corporations, including Sprint, Hewlett Packard, Pella, McGraw-Hill, Maytag, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Missouri and banks throughout the Midwest. In fact, most of his sales these days are corporate commissions.
According to Freed, private institutions and companies are attracted by the composition of his pieces. The artist states, “Though I am a landscape painter, I’m truly an abstract artist. My artwork draws you in; it is accessible because the paintings are about time and light. … Meditative paintings work well in big, modern, contemporary concrete spaces, and I have the ability to do large, monumental paintings whereas most landscape painters are easel painters.”
“Corporations are the patrons of our time,” says Freed, who in 2008 completed a massive 108" x 320" river landscape for the Emerson Electric Corporation headquarters in St. Louis and Epoch, a 96” x 120” painting that hangs in the new Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. by Legaya Figueras in Art Calendar
