Doug Lawler

Doug was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and started his art career with oil painting. As a young artist he was intrigued with the romance of painting in the tropics and found himself living in Hawaii where he eventually had several one-man art shows including showings at The Gallery of Fine Arts (Hilo) and the Unitarian Gallery (Honolulu). After winning the top prize in the Hilo art fair two years in a row, the state purchased one of his paintings to add to their collection at the Hawai‘i State Art Museum in Honolulu.

The allure of the 60’s brought him to the San Francisco bay area where he had several one-man shows and was an invited artist at the San Francisco Art festival. During this time he founded a printmaking collective, East Bay Media, in Berkeley where he designed and printed social justice leaflets and posters, including the well-known “Bring the Monster Down” poster, that was included in the “All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area” exhibit at the Oakland Museum in 2012.

During the late 70’s, Doug traveled to a tiny Mexican fishing village, Yelapa, where he lived and produced a series of pastel drawings that were later exhibited in the U.S. He eventually moved to Spain where, for 12 years, he worked and exhibited in numerous galleries such as The Galeria La Cortina in Barcelona, The Galeria Internacional in Ibiza, and the Galeria Torres Begue and Galeria Kandinski in Madrid. He also worked as a free-lance illustrator and was published in several periodicals in Barcelona.

Upon his return to the United States, Doug became interested in art conservation and worked as a free-lance fine arts conservator for many years at S.F. bay area museums including the Oakland Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. One of his many projects was the restoration of the Jade Pagoda at the Oakland Museum. He was also awarded the contract for the restoration  of the San Francisco Palace of Legion of Honor Museum, that included renovation of several period rooms and the conservation/installation of the Spanish ceiling.

Over the last 20 years, Doug has been focusing on dry point print- making in limited and numbered editions. More recently, he has created two new series oil pastels on paper called, “Painted People” and “The Human Tribe”.