PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: 
Emilie Heidemann, Carnelian Art Gallery marketing director
920-763-6980
eheidemanncag@gmail.com

Photos: 
Email eheidemanncag@gmail.com, and you will be given access to a Google Drive link with visuals of paintings, and the artist’s headshot

Madison, Wisconsin, June 1 - Carnelian Art Gallery, located at 221 King St., Suite 102, in downtown Madison, is pleased to announce its July exhibition, titled "Of Clowns and Artistic Depth.” This is a solo exhibition featuring works by Madison artist Douglas Hyslop.

Of Clowns and Artistic Depth is slated to kick off with an opening reception at 5 p.m. on Friday, July 10. The show’s end date is Friday, July 31.

As always at Carnelian Art Gallery, admission on opening night is free, and light refreshments will be served.

At 6 p.m. on opening night, Hyslop will deliver an artist talk regarding his background, technique and the themes that inform his artworks, which are large-scale oil paintings that depict circus figures, mainly clowns, and settings.

“I have painted in Madison for many years,” says Hyslop, who is a Madison native. “This is my first opportunity to exhibit in a conventional ‘for sale’ gallery in my hometown. I appreciate Evan (Bradbury) for giving me the opportunity.”

Hyslop holds degrees in psychology and food chemistry, both obtained from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. He works as an artist on the side.

Of what inspires his work, Hyslop says “allegory is a literary mode that relies heavily on images. In this mode, there is the idea that all individuals have their own essence and meaning, and these individuals are part of a larger essence and meaning. I am inspired to try to see and express and understand how such an idea works with individual figures and groups of figures, and the compositions they exist in.”

Hyslop begins each artwork with an idea involving figures and composition.

“Importantly, the figures come first,” he says. “I often develop the composition around the figures in a choreographic way. On canvas, I generally start with a drawing pencil (usually model HD), brush, and white paint (Titanium White). I start drawing. If I like what I draw, I continue. If not, I white out the pencil lines with white paint, and begin again. At some point, often after being well into the painting, I begin to add pigments other than white. When I do this, I generally build up thin layers of color, and make figures and objects as transparent as possible (Photographs of my paintings are sometimes mistaken for water colors, which they are not.). I try to make paintings , such that the viewer can look into, maybe even through, the ‘world’ created.”

A lot of people ask Hyslop why he paints clowns, he says. 

“They are truth-tellers,” he writes in his artist statement that will be on display along with his works at Carnelian Art Gallery. “The jester is the one person the king listens to when he wants the truth.”

“We are proud to exhibit the works of Douglas Hyslop,” says Evan Bradbury, Carnelian Art Gallery owner and head curator. “Please join us on Friday, July 10, and throughout the rest of that month to explore the complex world Hyslop has created through his paintings.”