Douglas Max Utter
Email: d_utter_98@yahoo.com
Vita
Born 12/8/1950, Cleveland, OH
I was educated in part at Case-Western Reserve University, 1974-5, and have been self-employed as
a writer and exhibiting artist since 1986. At various times I've taught painting and drawing courses at
the University of Akron(1997-98), Kent State University (2001-2), and Cleveland Institute of Art (2003).
I was co-Founder and sometime editor of Angle Magazine (2003-2007), managing editor of Artefakt
Magazine (2004-2005) and from 2005-2008 organized shows and publications as Exhibitions and
Collections Coordinator for the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve. I began writing criticism and
commentary on the arts in 1988. Since 2006 I've written weekly reviews and commentary as art critic
for Cleveland Scene Magazine (formerly the Free Times). As noted below, I've won awards from the
Cleveland Press Club, and over the years have received two Fellowships in the area of art criticism
from the Ohio Arts Council, plus one in painting. I've written several hundred reviews, articles, and
catalogue essays.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2008 William Busta Gallery Prints and Small Paintings (November)
2006 1point618 Gallery (Cleveland, OH) Mostly Sky
Convivium 33 (Cleveland, OH) Selected Works
2005 E. Gordon Gallery (Cleveland, OH)
2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 Dead Horse Gallery (Cleveland, OH)
2004 Zygote Press (Cleveland, OH) Prints and Paintings
1999 Lakeland College (Kirtland, OH)
1998, 1997, 1995, 1993, 1990, 1989 The William Busta Gallery (Cleveland, OH)
1998 Art Essence Gallery (Painesville, OH)
1996 The Hub Gallery (Phoenix, AZ)
1995 The Interchurch Center (475 Riverside Dr., NYC)
1993 Cleveland Independent Art (Cleveland, OH)
Brooklyn 11205 Art (Brooklyn, NYC)
1991 Galerie Kneipe (Augsburg, Germany)
Gallery Saireido (482 W. Broadway, NYC)
Venustatis (104 W.14th St., NYC)
1990 International House Gallery, The Rockefeller Foundation (NYC)
1988 Joyce Porcelli Gallery (Cleveland, OH) Paintings and Photocopy Derivations
SELECTED FOCUS EXHIBITIONS
2008 William Busta Gallery Summer Painting Exhibition
Asterisk Gallery 19
2007 exit (a gallery space) Beka Goedde and Douglas Max Utter: articulating space
2006 Convivium 33 (Cleveland, OH) The Seven Deadly Sins
2005 Notre Dame University (Cleveland, OH) Making Eye Contact
2004 Sandusky Cultural Center (Sandusky, OH) Go Figure
Zygote Press (Cleveland, OH) Prints
2003 McDonough Museum, Youngstown, OH Overflow Feb.
Appalachian State University (Boone, NC) Halpert Biennial Exhibition
2002 Dead Horse Gallery Objects That Don’t Move January
The Beck Center, Lakewood, OH The Many Faces of Cleveland: A Century of Portraiture
BK Smith Gallery, Lake Erie College The Artists Project
2000 Dead Horse Galley (Cleveland, OH) Four Takes on the Figure
Here Here Gallery (Cleveland, OH) Trail of Narratives
1999 Lewallen Contemporary Art (Santa Fe, NM) The Power of Paint Feb.
Beck Center for the Arts (Lakewood, OH) First Ohio Print Biennial Sept.
1998 Ursuline College (Cleveland, OH) The Hallinan – Newman Religious Art Collection
The Mansfield Art Center (Mansfield, OH) A Body of Work June-July
SPACES (Cleveland, OH) Howling at the Edge of a Renaissance
1997 Cuyahoga Community College (Cleveland, OH) Print Show
Tribes Gallery (285 E. 3rd St., NYC) Poets and Painters II
System (76 E.13th St., NYC) Works from Poets and Painters at Tribes Gallery 1995-1997
1996 Massilon Museum “Insights”
1995 Cleveland State University (Cleveland, OH) The Measure of All Things
1991 Wesley Theological Seminary Center for the Arts (Washington DC) Wrestling With the Angel
1990 Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center (Portsmouth, OH) Mother and Child
The Governor's Residence Art Collection (Columbus, OH) Ohio Arts Council
1989 Sandusky Cultural Center (Sandusky, OH) Young and Restless
1988 SPACES (Cleveland, OH) Anna Arnold, Brian Azzarello, Douglas Utter
1987 Edinboro University of PA, Psychotronic and Neopunkedelic Art Exhibition
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
2006 Artists’ Fellowship (New York, NY) Assistance Grant
2004 Zygote Press, Cleveland, OH Artist in Residence Program Fellowship
Artists’ Fellowship (New York, NY) Assistance Grant
Cleveland Press Club Excellence in Journalism Award
Poets and Writers Guild of Greater Cleveland Special Award
2001 Best Painting Award, First Cleveland Biennial Juried Exhibition, CSU Gallery
Ohio Arts Council, Individual Fellowship (Criticism)
1995 Award, 40th Annual Newman Religious Art Show
1995 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Fellowship (Criticism)
1993 Ohio Arts Council, Individual Fellowship (Painting)
1990 First Prize - Purchase Award, 35th Annual Newman Religious Art Show
1987 Best Painting Award, May Show, Cleveland Museum of Art
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Artists Archives of the Western Reserve
Asian - American Society, New York, NY
Case-Western University, School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH
Cleveland Artists Foundation
Governor's Residence Art Collection, Columbus, OH
Albert Grokoest Collection, 41 Union Square, Suite #1121 NY, NY 10003
Hallinan Center, Cleveland, OH 44106
Kent State University Department of Fine Arts
John J. McDonough Museum, Youngstown, OH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Henry Overflow (catalogue essay, John J. McDonough Museum, Youngstown OH) Feb 2003
Catalogue, The Governor's Residence Art Collection 1990-91, The Ohio Arts Council pp.60-61
Catalogue, Fifty-first National Midyear Exhibition, Butler Institute of American Art (1987) pg.29
Catalogue, Howling at the Edge of the Renaissance: SPACES and Alternative Art in Cleveland,
9/1998 pp.42, 66, 80
Catalogue, Psychotronic and Neopunkedelic Art Exhibition Edinboro University of PA 9/87 pg.3, pg.19
Chico, Beth, Erotic Economy: Contours of Desire Dialogue, Sept/Oct. 1993 pg.21
Columbia University Record (Columbia University, NYC), Transfiguring Reality (3/10/95)
Cullinan, Helen, The Plain Dealer
Paintings of Poignant Impact 6/9/89 FRIDAY 6/9/89 pg.10
Works to disturb, challenge 2/12/88
Desmett, Don Art with an edge: the William Busta Gallery Dialogue 5-6/90 pg.21
Gibans, Nina Freedlander Creative Essence / Cleveland”s Sense of Place Kent State University Press
2005 pp.84-6, 118
Green, Frank The Body as Self, Wound Free Times 2/8/95
Douglas Max Utter at Dead Horse Art in America 1/02 pg.116
The Dead Horse Whinnies Northern Ohio Live 2/02 pp.12-13
Hellerman, D.J. Vacation (review of Summer Painting Exhibition at William Busta) Free Times 4/16/08
Hershey, Rice Busta’s Last Stand Northern Ohio Live 3/98 pp. 24-5
Hinson, Tom The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art April 1987 pg.149 and back cover
Lewis, Zachary Utterly Fresh The Plain Dealer FRIDAY 12/3/04 pp.40, 41
Litt Steven Erotica exhibition could use shadings of subtlety The Plain Dealer 5/17/93 pg.4C
Busta Gallery winds down on high note FRIDAY 1/2/98 pg.12
McCoy, Mary Angel at the Dadian Gallery The Washington Post 9/28/91 pg.D2
Rosenthal, Mary Owen Douglas Utter The New Art Examiner March 1994 pg.45
Shinn, Dorothy Erotic Paintings Masterful The Akron Beacon Journal 5/23/93 pp.E1, E4
Tranberg, Dan Fine Prints Free Times 9/27/99 pg.63
Art of Darkness Free Times 10/4/00 pg.54
Douglas Max Utter Retrospective (catalogue essay for Dead Horse Gallery, 10/03)
Landscapes of the Mind Free Times 9/26/07
Yellow Silk (Issue #47, 1994) (Cover and all art by Douglas Utter)
PUBLICATIONS
Douglas Max Utter is the author of articles, reviews, catalogue essays and introductory essays,
published by Art Papers (Atlanta), New Art Examiner (Chicago), Dialogue (Columbus), Angle
(Cleveland), Artefakt (New York – Ohio region) The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), the Free Times
(Cleveland), Ceramics Monthly, Fiber Arts, Northern Ohio Live, Kent State University Press, MOCA
Cleveland, the McDonough Museum, as well as various galleries and individuals.
Statement
I grew up mostly in Cleveland Heights, OH, during the 1950’s, right at the crest of the escarpment
that “Heights” refers to. I started to draw pictures around the same time I learned to talk. I was an
only child. My first crayon on paper works tended to be narrative; they chronicled the progress of
the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, galloping past jack-o-lanterns and rail fences. Maybe I
have never fully departed from the romantic, sensual Gothicism of this phase, but a little later I
switched subjects and started drawing sailing ships for several years. I also copied the illustrations
from an American Song Book, such as the civil war soldiers and tents shown opposite “We’re
Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground.” In the fourth grade I started to draw people around me
and copy more sophisticated drawings of civil war battlefields. In 1960 my family moved to England
for a year, where I attended a relatively impoverished county school. There were no books
available in the classroom, so we made our own little notebooks. Covering Natural History, for
instance, we drew animals that the teacher would first sketch on the blackboard. That year I also
started to first sketch from nature, then paint in oils on panel.
I had a tutor or two and took several classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art in early
adolescence, but mainly I learned about the history of painting by looking at books and visiting
museums with my very supportive mother. I took no art classes in high school, studied no art at
college. I was a disciple of Edvard Munch and Albert Pinkham Ryder, happily slopping around in
the late 19th century; there was nobody to stop me.
My roundabout style of self-education was slow. It was not until the mid 1980’s that my work
changed in a major way, after absorbing some of the lessons of early abstract expressionism and
combining these with aspects of the pattern and decoration movement that was just ending its
vogue at that time. My paintings also got much bigger in emulation of the transavantgardia and
American Neo-Expressionism. But unlike most of that work my subject matter was devoid of any
overt irony or intentional funkiness. I didn’t fit in terribly well, except when my preoccupations were
misunderstood. For instance, I was included in a show called “Punkedelic and Psychotronic Art” in
about 1988, at Edinboro University in PA. This was because my dominant medium at the time was
black spray paint. The paintings however were concerned with archetypal and iconographic
themes, and I was using the spray paint because the way it hit the grain of the canvas looked
something like much-enlarged photo-reproduction. In one long series of works each of which
measured about 6 feet square, I was looking at newspaper clippings as a point of departure. These
were chosen on the basis of their accidental resemblance to Renaissance Crucifixions,
Depositions, Nativities, illustrations of biblical stories and parables, and so on. I had studied
classical languages and literature in college, and was interested in early Christian and medieval
philosophy, as well as the depth psychology of C.G.Jung and the field of comparative mythology.
Mainly, though, these paintings had to do with my immediate emotional and aesthetic experience
as a new father of two children, a boy and a girl born in 1984 and 1985. The paintings were highly
dramatic depictions of stages and degrees of intimacy. I was trying to recreate a sense of touch in
visual terms – an effort that continues to the present. And I was trying in insert our experiences as
a family back into history. Many of the spray paint works were based on our own family photos.
Since about 2002 I have been pouring paint onto canvas in an effort to push the painted surface
toward the eye, and thus re-measure the distances between the illusions created by drawing and
the more three-dimensional, bumpy features of the surfaces I prepare. Lately I have painted
landscapes with clouds and storms, as well as many heads – anything that bulges and pushes
across real space toward the eye. My painting is about presence and urgent encounter, as well as
the loss of these; about absence and memory.
-- Douglas Max Utter