Some Things I Know,
Some Things I Only Believe

SOME THINGS I KNOW, SOME THINGS I ONLY BELIEVE is a two-dimensional mixed-media exhibition by Deborah Douglas. Based around the theme of knowledge, the work focuses on the artist’s consideration of facts, truth, and wishful thinking. Included are multiple works on paper and wood panels within the gallery, a wall installation, and a window display of imagery and text facing the street on Grand Avenue. Click here to view a full list of the works for sale.

Firmly rooted in visual culture, I consume information by bouncing between sources: fact-based news, social media, scholarly journals, textbooks, broadsides, astrology, fiction, advertising, etc. This is my truth. I’m all about it. All of it. For me, these things meld seamlessly. Making art with a variety of materials is a kind of physical manifestation of that cultural consumption. I filter and visualize this information through a lens of my own narrative (both real and imagined). My art explores gender equity, domesticity, relationships, food, anxiety, and empowerment with a dark sense of humor that I have cultivated through necessity. 

As an artist, I work with a variety of materials, including oil, enamel, encaustic, watercolor, ink, graphite, collage, and digital prints. The consistent practice of mixing media, ideas, and formal approaches is innate and familiar for me. The act of combining materials became rooted in the art world’s vernacular in the second half of the 20th century and I, like many artists, build and make meaning through the proximity of formal and conceptual elements within a work of art. That meaning is significant to me on a couple of levels. Foremost is the desire to create an aesthetically pleasing composition through those formal elements of color, line, and form. However, the need to tell a story, whether evident or not, is equally important. The underlying meaning within my work is my way of speaking the truth that I live in.

 DEBORAH DOUGLAS is a mixed media artist living in Saint Louis, MO. Her work addresses issues of gender, feminism, and empowerment through personal and societal imagery. She exhibits extensively both regionally and nationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Power is Pretty!, St. Louis Community College at Wildwood (2019), Past, Present, Future Tense, The Sheldon Art Galleries (2018), and Alternative Facts (1965-2017), Schmidt Art Center in Belleville, Illinois, (2017). Her work has been reviewed in publications including the Kansas City Star, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Intermission Magazine, the Riverfront Times, The Beacon, and the Columbia Daily Tribune. Douglas has served as a juror for numerous professional and student art exhibitions. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Truman State University in 1988 and Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 1991. Douglas is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Saint Louis University where she teaches studio art and art history.

Press

Some Things I Know, Some Things I Only Believe
Spring 2020 | All The Art

Gazelles in Our Midst: Deborah Douglas – Artist, Teacher, Realist
Jan. 15, 2021 | Gazelle Magazine