About My Art
Refuge from technology...
I approach drawing not as preparation but as a primary practice, engaging deeply with the medium’s capacity to stand alone as serious art. My graphite works exist in a charged space between memory, abstraction, and figuration, evoking images that feel both familiar and elusive. For me, drawing is both a connection to a long artistic tradition and a way of participating in today’s renewed dialogue around the medium. My practice affirms drawing’s enduring power and its evolving relevance in contemporary art.
This belief first took shape in my landscapes, which began as a way to explore the quiet presence of my surroundings. I never intend to capture a fixed moment of a place, but rather its shifting memory. Each piece is constructed from thousands of straight lines that accumulate into dense fields of darks and lights, creating the illusion of mass, volume, and depth. Up close, the lines appear frenzied and restless, yet from a distance the forms settle into a vibrating stillness works that, despite their expressionistic intensity, hold a calm and meditative presence.
From these beginnings, my practice expanded into a broader series of drawings that sit with the quiet presence of both natural and manmade forms. I render them not as fixed images, but as impressions that shift and unravel over time. Built from countless graphite and charcoal lines marks that cross, accumulate, and sometimes dissolve, these works hover between what is seen and what is remembered. The landscapes, and other subjects, emerge and fade simultaneously, tracing not the object itself but its echo: the silence, the fragility, the lingering resonance that remains long after a moment has passed.
Drawing is transformative. The start of a drawing is like embarking on a journey, each one starts with an intention and leads to some new realization which feeds my next work.
Douglas Gilbert Portfolio
Commissions. Request a special piece that enables us to share a personal journey. Who wouldn't love that?
If you’re looking for something special, check out my portfolio and see if there’s something that speaks to you.