Donald Fels

Available Works

Donald Fels' recent work with casein (Indian distemper) began in South India in 2008 and were completed in Fels’s studio in Fall City.  The artist first began experimenting with casein in Italy on his first Fulbright in 1985. Twenty years later, in India on his second Fulbright, he encountered the same material.   The combined experiences with the casein medium in Europe and Asia, was the stimulus for the current series.  Fels mixes all his own colors with the distemper base.  He has developed an idiosyncratic method of working that allows for layers to come through to the surface, often combined with drawing and yielding a rich visible history, a chronology of the work. The layered distemper produces a deep luster that brings the colors quietly but forcefully to to the fore.

• Recent Exhibitions: Mapping, November 2008; Outsourced: Donald Fels in India, November 2006

Outsourced: Donald Fels in India

With the painters from the Godown Studio

Fels has been making art about trade around the world since 1990. In 2004, he traveled to India as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, spending seven months working with a group of sign painters to create a large series of stunning ‘hoardings’- enamel on metal panels. Until extremely recently, India cities large and small were full of bright and brilliantly painted (by hand-) advertising hoardings. Despite a time honored tradition in India of outdoor narrative painting, hoardings have been reduced to anachronisms by evolving global marketing strategies.

Additional Available Works