Doug Shelton (b. 1945) American, Oil on Canvas. Depicts idle youths next to a stylish motel sign on a hazy Southwestern street with heavy dark clouds hanging above. Signed bottom left. Prior gallery label on stretcher. Title: "Kiva Lodge Motel." Titled, dated 2002, and attributed on back. 

Overall Size: 27 3/4 x 21 3/4 in. 

Sight Size: 24 x 18 in. 

Frame Thickness: 1 5/8 in. 

#4581  

Doug Shelton was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1945. As a child he began his art studies in the academic tradition of drawing, perspective, color, and the accurate rendering of the play of light on form, encouraged by his parents to explore his creativity. After attending the academically focused American Academy of Art in Chicago for a year, he moved to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a BFA in 1972. He received the Arts Midwest NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship for “serious, continued, and exceptional aesthetic investigation of the painting medium” in the 1980s. In addition to painting on canvas he found a love for making murals, particularly crafting pieces rich with historical and environmental characteristics of the areas he painted them in. He gained national renown for his mural and decorative wall-painting projects with Evergreen Studios in New York, including painting the ceiling murals in the House Wing of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., as well as the Fox Theatre in Tucson, Arizona. His stint in Tucson made him fall in love with the stark countryside, and he moved there permanently in 1994 to open his own gallery and art store in the Catalina Foothills, although he retained representation at Olson Larsen Gallery in Iowa. In 1998 he received the Arizona Commission on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and continues to produce new pieces in a style he dubbed “Southwest Noir,” with representation through Jane Hamilton Fire Art Gallery.