Doorway (from the "Doorway" Portfolio)

David C. Driskell was skilled not only as a painter, but also as a printmaker who created innovative prints in a range of media, from woodcuts to lithographs to monoprints.[1] His 2009 Doorway portfolio is distinctive as a visual essay that combines twelve hand-pulled serigraphs with the evocative prose of Michael Albert. Printed by Curlee Holton at Cardinal Point Press, the project developed out of a close collaboration between the artist and writer: “Michael did not intend to provide a narrative that describes the images. Neither do the images illustrate the text. Nevertheless, something quite magical happens when the images and prose are viewed together,” noted Cardinal Point Press’s president, Howard Greenberg.[2]

Loosely based on compositions in collage, mixed media, and oil, the prints are a glowing testimony to Driskell’s love of overlapping surfaces and vibrant, multi-colored forms. To create each image, Driskell choreographed a palette averaging twenty different colors, applying them one by one to build up brilliant surfaces. As the colors and forms meld into one another like molten liquid, their fluid edges ebb and flow in undulating rhythms. Image and prose are richly interwoven into a tapestry that sings of nature and its spiritual, inner life.

In Pine Trees at Night, Driskell explores a favorite subject that was the focus of his master’s thesis at Catholic University in 1962. Over the ensuing years, the “massive pines towering towards the sky” outside his studio window in Maine afforded the artist much artistic sustenance.[3] His interest in the landscape went beyond naturalistic concerns. “I saw it as part and parcel of something larger … everlasting life, eternity,” the artist later explained.[4] Driskell’s image is also distinguished by its nighttime setting. “You don’t stop seeing because night comes,” the wise artist recently explained.[5]

In the titular image for which the portfolio is named, the artist suggests the doorway as a passage between two worlds—interior and exterior, material and spiritual, real and imagined. In the Doorway prints, as in all of Driskell’s work, one feels his divine connection to nature and the joy he derived from the creative act of making art. Driskell’s everlasting spirit lives on in the soulful reverie of these and all his artistic expressions.

1. For more on Driskell’s printmaking, see Adrienne L. Childs, Evolution: Five Decades of Printmaking by David C. Driskell (San Francisco: Pomegranate Press, 2007).

2. Howard Greenberg, in an email to Elsa Smithgall, August 14, 2009.

3. David Driskell, in “A Conversation between David Driskell and Bruce Brown,” David Driskell: Painting Across the Decade 1996–2006 (New York: DC Moore Gallery, 2006), n.p.

4. Driskell, in Oral History Interview with Cynthia Mills, 2009, n.p. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

5. See “Artist Conversation with David C. Driskell and Elsa Smithgall” in this volume, p. 50.

Text by Elsa Smithgall, adapted from Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collection for a New Century (The Phillips Collection in association with Giles, 2021)