Doug Osa
For more than 30 years, Doug Osa has been captivated by the Midwest landscape, from urban and rural locations near his home, to the Flint Hills of Kansas. Drawing and painting on location has been the foundation of his working habits from the very beginning.
“It’s important to me to experience each location, its sights and sounds and various weather conditions. I will often return to locations throughout the seasons and years. To me it’s like getting to know someone new. Subtle nuances and personalities slowly reveal themselves over time through this contact. Engaging all my senses on site adds to the conviction that goes into each work done in the studio.”
Osa’s choice of subjects are not so much sought after as they are discovered, sometimes in the most unlikely places. The way the landscape responds to ongoing human activity and the traces left behind are particularly engaging. He furthers, “My desire is to find the underlying order and beauty of those things observed, and to arrive at that ‘sense of place’ in the finished work.”
Still life paintings are a rare treat for Osa. They initially developed out of found objects that he brought home from his forays in the field but quickly shifted to subjects that came to mind from the time spent with his grandkids. He says, “Each one is a cherished memory, a portrait or snapshot, of a specific shared experience in our lives.”