For four decades, the visionary artwork of Southern artist Douglas Lee Brooks remained hidden from view, except for occasional paintings gifted to his family.
A self-taught artist, Brooks never sold or exhibited his paintings during his lifetime. After a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia as a young adult, he spent most of his life living near family, both in his hometown of Marietta, GA and on a wooded lake in rural Alabama. He died of illness in December 2021 at age 68.
In that time, Brooks drew and painted relentlessly. The result is an astonishing body of work — more than 1,500 paintings, plus drawings, pottery, and other works — represented by 15 paintings on display now through October 7 at The Warren Alpert Medical School. The exhibit, Resilience Rising, hums with endlessly expansive imagination — playful slices of life, empathic animal portraits, and fantastical figments — that belie the confines of the artist’s diagnosis.
“As complicated as his life was, all Doug gave was joy and warmth and community,” says his sister Dolly Brooks, the owner and manager of his archive. “Through his art, he lived a very full life.”
That vitality is important to highlight in a medical school that teaches person-first values, says Audrey Tyrka, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior.
“Even as physicians, it can be easy to make assumptions about what’s going on in someone’s mind if they don’t communicate in ways we expect,” Tyrka says. “Doug’s art shows incredible depths of sensitivity, understanding, and humor. It reminds us that adversity and struggle can urge all of us to dig deeper and develop new understandings of ourselves, each other, and the natural world.”
The exhibit is coordinated to coincide with the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior’s celebration of 50 years of training psychologists and psychiatrists in compassionate care.
Most pieces in Resilience Rising hail from Brooks’ last decade of life, a period when he shifted to creating more large-format paintings. (“Dolly,” his sister recalls him saying, “it’s like dancing on the canvas.”) Brooks’ bold lines swirl jewel colors into scenes both crystalline and lifelike. In the painting Going Home, a ball cracks off the bat of a powerfully haunched baseball player. In The Red Hats, jazz musicians strain and wail over their instruments. Several paintings trace the grace of horses, fish, and deer. The scenes are as clear as stained glass, yet ripple like a Georgia pond.
“Doug was one of the most observant people I’ve ever known,” Dolly says. “As an artist, he viewed the world through a unique lens. At times, he referred to his view as seeing the world through a kaleidoscope.”
In the exhibit’s six self-portraits, Brooks turns an inquisitive eye on himself. His piercing eyes and trademark moustache shape-shift across four decades of changing idiosyncratic styles. But in each new iteration, Brooks finds some new glimmer of stoicism or whimsy.
“Doug offers an extraordinary example of the human spirit,” Dolly says. “He lived the phrase ‘resilience rising’ every day of his life.”
Resilience Rising is open to the public weekdays from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m.