Vancouver based artist Douglas Coupland paints geometric abstractions that are impossibly smooth and impressively clean.
On first glace, Coupland's paintings appear to be a pure exploration of colour and flat, geometric forms. Circles, stripes, and squares are predominant on their smooth surfaces, and result in well designed and satisfyingly crisp paintings. The only indication that these are in fact paint, and not digital renderings, is the subtle linen weave that pushes through the surface of the paint, adding the beauty of a painting's materiality to each work. Their expansive colour palette is also an impressive feat, pushing the limits of colour contrast possibilities. Their explanatory titles, however, bring these works beyond the hint or representation and give the viewers clues about their reference images. The title "Four Seasons" transforms an intriguing collection of stripes into a catalog of a year's colour palette.
Douglas Coupland's paintings are both a record and a deconstruction of his subject matter, which includes both architecture and nature. We love how controlled the paint handling is, and how the colour palettes cause the geometric forms to jump off the canvas!
