Douillet had the good fortune to be born in the north of France to loving, resourceful parents. On the surface, his childhood was much like any of the time and place, but his childhood can be looked at in the light of the artist he became. He was a singularly observant, sensitive, and independent child, which gave his typical childhood experiences a distinct cast to his development, helping to shape his attitudes, his memory, and his thoughts. Years later, as an artist, he became socially independent, almost solitary; keen in his observations of society and folkways; spiritually philosophical about the nature and destiny of life; not without humor, but completely serious about the endeavor of painting. What he experienced as a child would help shape aspects of the artist he would become. 

Douillet is not an artist who practices his craft for the moment. What keeps him standing at the easel, brush in hand, is his conviction that he still has work to do. His art is continually exploratory: it searches, it reveals, and it proposes through imagery from nature, esoterica, and philosophy. The techniques he developed reflect his desire to search and his awareness that the work that he is doing matters.

Douillet’s painting gives viewers a timeless pictorial account of human striving for awareness and meaning. It is worthwhile to acknowledge that his use of centuries-old methods contribute to the quality and longevity of the physical painting, while allowing him to connect with his conscious and unconscious sources of inspiration. In past centuries, the traditional painting methods brought satisfaction and pride to collectors of royal rank, to prelates, and to wealthy merchants alike. Today, those techniques are rarely used by other artists, but Douillet has used, mastered, and improved them. Scores of modern collectors have been rewarded as a result.    

Graphite Drawings

Douillet does not think much of a painter’s ability to talk about his paintings. He has always been happy to let others do the talking for him; he likes to quote Dali’s injunction, “Painter, paint.”  

Douillet has given us no manifesto to help us categorize his work. He has joined no associations with like-minded artists in a common cause, and claimed no terminology to describe what he does as an artist. His one defining statement is that he was looking for himself in his work, and eventually found himself in his work.  

The salient fact is that Douillet’s life is his painting. In his view, his personal life is neither important nor interesting. Douillet’s firm position is that his paintings are as much of his life as the public needs to see. The paintings reveal the artist, of course. But they also reveal the person, if only indirectly.

To paraphrase Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass: who touches a Douillet painting touches a man. Douillet’s work reveals the core of his life, a life of observing, reading, thinking, and imagining, expressed in an obsession with painting: mindful, exquisitely crafted painting.

Douillet’s art engages us in a conversation that challenges us to use our minds as well as our eyes, and rewards us with the pleasures of wonderment and understanding. It is an art of thinking.    

Two of Douillet’s favorite quotes are from Marcel Duchamp: “the artist who makes a work does not know what he is doing” and “it is the viewer who makes the painting”.     

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