BIo
Douglas Graham (b. 1948, Kingston, Jamaica) operates within a lineage of Caribbean and American portraiture informed by Surrealist traditions and Global Black aesthetic histories. His paintings synthesize classical draftsmanship with expressive chromatic sensibilities rooted in sustained Black presence across geographies and generations.
The influence of Wifredo Lam, Hector Hyppolite, and Agostino Bruniase emerges through Graham’s gestural brushwork, spatial ambiguity, and luminous handling of light. Grounded in sustained study at the Art Students League of New York, his practice reflects a disciplined engagement with form while allowing space for intuition and symbolic resonance.
Much like Arshile Gorky, whose hybridized visual language bridged European modernism and American abstraction, Graham navigates between inherited traditions and self-authored expression, cultivating a personal syntax that resists fixed categorization.
Raised between Kingston and Brooklyn, Graham’s paintings carry the saturated visual rhythms of Caribbean landscapes alongside the social textures of urban New York, positioning his work within a Global Black continuum of cultural production and lived experience. Scenes of neighborhood parks and everyday residents recur throughout his paintings, functioning as both portraiture and cultural record.
His seated portraits — developed through more than thirty years of study and practice — foreground anatomical rigor, quiet psychological intensity, and a commitment to sustained observation.