James Doolin

James Doolin (June 28, 1932 – July 22, 2002) was an American painter and muralist best known for his saturated natural and urban southern California landscapes. Los Angeles artist and writer Doug Harvey notes that his paintings allow us "to see the places we overlook every day and to recognize that, in spite of its ominous industrial overtones, the city is shot through with a luminous, electric vitality and a psychological potency verging on the mythic." Described as a "master of color and composition," his "evocative, moody paintings teemed with life."

Early life and education

Doolin was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and moved with his parents and brother to the suburbs of Philadelphia when the artist was seven. The New England landscapes he encountered summering in Vermont would later prove influential in his work. During his primary school years, as the U.S. engaged in World War II, he became fixated with images of military hardware and battle scenes. As young as ten years old, the artist "worked through foreshortening issues" [with wing positions in aerial dogfight drawings] and "mastered the principles of perspective." Complex perspective would become a dominant motif throughout his career.

His father, a successful insurance salesman, wanted his son to follow him in a business career, but in 1950, Doolin applied to the University of Vermont with the intention of pursuing a liberal arts education. However, a teacher encouraged him to apply to Philadelphia's University of the Arts and he was awarded a full scholarship. The University of the Arts "provided him with a strong foundation and a new attitude about the value of art" and he credited the school with fostering his individual style. He sent three new paintings which were highly praised by several critics, and subsequently acquired by Australia's three principle art museums. In 1969, he began painting a new series of "luminous and ethereal" Artificial Landscapes with a "minimalist aesthetic" known as the Arch Series. Central Street Gallery contacted Doolin in 1970 to mount a second show, and he sent nine of his new Artificial Landscapes. This show was an unqualified critical and financial success. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1981, 1986, and 1992. Throughout his career, Doolin struggled against "the L.A. art establishment's prejudice against pictorialism and regionalism," but he eventually earned the respect of critics, collectors and fellow artists. Australian writer Peter Carey noted that Doolin was a "risk-taker, [whose] choice of subject matter was often unfashionable." Upon Doolin's death, artist Carl Cheng described him as a West Coast Edward Hopper, capturing "both the beauty and the alienation of our time in Los Angeles." After his masterful, incandescent painting Psychic headlined the traveling exhibition "Representing L.A.," (2000–2002) and the San Jose Museum of Art held a retrospective of his work in 2001, his reputation as a major Los Angeles artist solidified.