"Carousel Pond" Painting

"From my earliest memories I can recall being visually excited with the world around me: the blue of the underside of the maple leaves as they blow in the wind, the sunlight pouring onto the kitchen cups and saucers reflecting the color of the table cloth. As a child, I had so much pleasure riding in the car watching the telephone lines skipping by, stringing images of fantastic animals and abstract shapes. At night I would drift to sleep drawing in my head images of ships castles and the next day draw them in school. I am sure the way I passed chemistry was with the painting I did of all those test tubes and odd shaped flasks!

I like the view at night and early morning and how the multitude of colored lights mixed with the luminous clouds reflecting the colored lights of factories and highways to create a fabric of line and color I see through the silhouette of ridgeline trees.

I wish to continue to draw and paint and see the world anew. Wishing to inspire and encourage, instruct, making art exciting and revealing as well as healing. To learn to see the beauty in the world, but to also use art to communicate that this is a troubled world though can be made a better place through the arts, it’s language is universal."

Douglas Elliott was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in March of 1953. He studied art initially at the University of Delaware from 1971-1973. At the University, he studied drawing and painting with surrealist painter, Charles Rowe. During the years of 1972-1973, he made an independent study of museums and cathedrals throughout Europe. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, graduating in 1977. He was awarded the Henry J. Sheidt traveling Scholarship. While at the Academy he studied under landscape painting instructor Morris Blackburn.

Post-graduate he studied drawing and painting at the Royal Academy of London, the Academy of Fine Arts Venice and figure painting with Jack Barnett. Later, he was the instructor of drawing at the Community College of Art Philadelphia and Conshohocken Arts League. His work is in numerous private and corporate collections. He currently lives in Wilmington with his wife, two children and one grandchild.