Doug Lawler brings a pictorial story of magic, friendship, and adventure to the walls of the gallery in a series of 100 sepia-toned dry point etchings.  

We are thrilled to be featuring Doug Lawler’s sublime fable of magic, adventure, loss, and discovery. Told pictorially with 100 beautiful dry point etchings, viewers take a literal and imaginative journey through time while walking along the gallery wall following the voyage of a girl and her dog through a mysterious land. In this showcase, chapters one and two of the story are displayed in sequence on the gallery walls. The story without words invites the “reader” or “viewer” to interpret each etching of the story in their own words and voice, giving the story it’s own unique  narrative through every onlookers eyes. As a gallery, we are happy to be apart of The Island of Za‘s journey towards completion, and look forward to finding out what happens in chapter three.

Lawler has lived an adventurous life himself! A world traveler, Lawler has lived and worked in Hawaii, Mexico, Spain, the San Francisco bay area, and Detroit, Michigan, where he was born. While in Spain Lawler worked as an illustrator and had numerous solo shows at galleries such as The Galeria La Cortina in Barcelona, The Galeria Internacional in Ibiza, and the Galeria Torres Begue and Galeria Kandinski in Madrid.  While living in the bay area in the 1960’s, Lawler founded the printmaking collective East Bay Media that focused on printing leaflets and posters for social justice including the well-known “Bring the Monster Down” poster, that was included in the “All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area” exhibit at the Oakland Museum in 2012. Lawler also worked as a free-lance art conservator in the bay area completing projects for SFMOMA, The Oakland Museum, and the San Francisco Palace of Legion of Honor Museum.

Lawler’s current work is a material and philosophical investigation of color and light which he explores through the dry point etching process and ethereal layered compositions in oil pastel. Of his recent work Lawler says, “I try to capture an image where color and light combine to form a moment of grace.”