Graham Dougherty - Studio Artist

Statement:

"We give shape to our rooms; then rooms give shape to our lives. We pass through rooms unseeing; walls, floors, ceilings, doorways become unnoticed, accepted, ordinary. It is light which transforms the commonplace pragmatic shelter into a metaphor of remembered or desired sensations.
In these paintings the architectural (logical) elements become the abstracted structures of remembered (felt) moments. Both rational thought and remembered sensations are unified. The measured proportions give stability; the color, sensuality; while the patterns of abstracted light, reasoned in their geometric forms and sensual and ambiguous in their colors, give release and relief to an event remembered or longed for."

Reviews:

Wilmington News Journal
"Graham Dougherty’s work achieves a monumentality and tension: his large abstract paintings with their carefully balanced compositions and gentle blues and yellows not only hold their own on the museum’s walls but dominated the section of the exhibition where they hang."

Dover Post
"The paintings are cool and intellectual studies? we are surprised how captivating they become the longer we observe them. The best works play on the contrast of a static dignity of composition and the active, almost passionate, application of color? these are intelligent paintings, very dignified. It is worthwhile to spend some time contemplating the works for they have more to say than is apparent at first glance."

Tyler School of Art
Philadelphia, PA 1962 – ’64

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art
Philadelphia, PA 1964 – ’66