Fine Art Photography

Stephen Douglas was an artist with a unique creative spark. He taught me how to draw when I was a young child and he exposed me to the world of art, but more importantly, he showed me how to see.

After graduating from the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan in 1954, Stephen Harris Cohen became an illustrator for Broadway theater magazines. He changed his name to Stephen Douglas at age 18, and worked with many of the acting luminaries of the time–including Marilyn Monroe, Sidney Poitier, Julie Andrews, and Burl Ives. His framed stylized portraits, with signed dedications by the actors, hung at Downy’s Restaurant–one of New York’s theater district haunts.

Stephen continued creating theater illustrations during stints in Paris and London in the late 1950’s. In Puerto Rico, in 1961, he developed a more realistic portrait style, making charcoal drawings of the everyday people around him. He returned to New York and joined the Art Students League–where he learned the painting techniques of the Old Masters from Frank Mason.

His life took a consequential turn in 1963, when he attended a lecture by Indian guru Kirpal Singh, who was on a world tour teaching his tradition of meditation. My dad became a vegetarian, renounced material success, married my mother and moved to a country cottage in Westchester, NY to begin a family. Away from the lights of the big city, he forged an art teaching career that spanned over 5 decades. My father instructed classes and private lessons from his home studio and at various art centers in the Hudson Valley.

Stephen worked relentlessly on his own art, striving to say more with less and court the temporal dance of brush bristles and paint. He would make as many as a dozen studies to produce one drawing that he deemed satisfactory enough to sign. By the early 1970’s, his realistic work had become loose and dynamic. His watercolors of 1972 walk the exciting tightrope of control and chance; his pencil drawings of 1973 are both subtle and bold.

In the early 1980’s, my dad taught art at Lincoln Hall, a juvenile detention center, and made a series of portrait drawings of the mainly inner city adolescent students. He was an instructor of evening art classes at the Greenwich Library, in Connecticut, until around 2015–when vision issues prevented him from driving at night.

My father rarely exhibited his work. His drawings and paintings amassed inside his little brick house and studio. Sadly, a significant amount of his art was damaged by decades of poor storage and corrosive framing materials.

After steadily declining with dementia, my dad fell and broke his hip on January 3, 2021 and was removed from 950 Starlight Rd, never to return. After surgery, he took up residence in a nearby nursing home.

It took a year of concerted visits to carefully extricate the thousands of pieces of my father’s original art from the piles and to clear the overwhelming accumulation of things. The home that had been there all my life, where my dad lived and worked alone since my parents divorced in 1975, was emptied.

We sold the house to a young, local artist and furniture restorer on February 11, 2022. Frank is currently renovating the old brick cottage, with respect to its original character. I am thrilled that new life will grow where my dad’s creativity blossomed.

My father died peacefully last month.

He taught me to look at the “big picture” and not get lost in the details, to study shadows to understand dimension, and to squint my eyes to evaluate composition. For the immeasurable influence he cast upon my artistic sensibilities, I am forever grateful.

Stephen Douglas

November 5, 1936 - June 26, 2023

Click THIS LINK to see examples of my father’s art

In time, I will preserve and catalog my dad’s extensive oeuvre. I intend to put together a book of his art and hope to organize a retrospective exhibition in New York’s Hudson Valley.

My father and his unusual house have been recurring subjects of my photography since I enrolled in my first darkroom class, at the University of Vermont in the spring of 1998. My first project, “Composition”, was a still life from my dad’s bathroom. For the “Portrait” project, I posed my father in his galley kitchen.

Stephen Douglas continues to inspire my art:

“My Father’s Things, Contact Grids”

“950 Starlight Rd.”

To view a video interview, by the multi-faceted artist Fiona Small, about the projects based on objects from my dad’s house,

YouTube Video Interview

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

“Wheels” at the Museum of Everyday Life in Glover, Vermont.

My photograph (above) is part of the dimensional and varied new exhibition which navigates all things wheels. If you’ve never visited this unique museum, make the trip! Be sure to explore the permanent collection–where you can see two analog photographs of my father’s house, from last year’s exhibition, “Coming Clean”.

Selections from “Of Gavin,” Burlington Muffler & Brake, South Burlington, Vermont.

Through August, 2023

Here is a video of my interview for CCTV by videographer Charlie Giannoni from the opening of the “Vermonters’ Views of Cuba” exhibition at Burlington’s Fletcher Free Library, which closed on July 6, and an intro by curator Diane Gayer of GreenTara Space Gallery:

Jordan Douglas: Video Interview, Cuba Prints

Diane Gayer: Introduction

To watch the Preservation Burlington CCTV episode, in which host Ron Wanamaker interviews Erica Donnis, Jonathan Banfill, and me about our various roles in engaging Champlain College students about urban renewal, as part of a federal grant project on assessing change in our built community:

Video: “Raze, Rebuild, and Repeat”

The live broadcast was recorded on May 25, 2023.

WHAT’S NEXT…

In the August newsletter, I will feature examples of new explorations as well as darkroom prints from my early summer travels in Europe; and, I will begin offering select limited edition prints for sale.

See you next month!

Contact: jordansamdouglas@gmail.com

jordandouglasphotography.com