©2007-2012 Rebecca Doughty


Rebecca’s drawings and paintings have been exhibited widely since the 1980’s, at The Drawing Center in New York, The Boston Drawing Project, DeCordova Museum, Rose Art Museum, Allston Skirt Gallery, Clark Gallery, the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, and the Courthouse Gallery in County Mayo, Ireland. She has received fellowships and awards from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, The Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland, Massachusetts Cultural Council, The Blanche E. Colman Foundation, The A.R.T Fund of the Berkshire-Taconic Community Foundation, and a Best Show Award from the International Association of Art Critics, Boston chapter. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, DeCordova Museum, Simmons College, Wellington Management, Fidelity Investments, The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ucross Foundation, and private collections in many countries. Rebecca lives with her husband, poet Edison Dupree in Cambridge, Massachusetts.



The animals of my childhood, both real and imagined, were my closest companions and favorite amusement. As a kid I absorbed the print and moving images of the time-- comics and funnies, Looney Tunes and MAD Magazine. The images most intriguing to me were wry and deceptively simple. I studied the protagonists engaged in their curious adventures and complex human predicaments, the humor and satire, and the deeper, darker subtexts.


Much like those childhood companions, the animal characters that now inhabit my drawings are good company for navigating life's comic and tragic journeys. In a kind of 2-dimensional miniature theatre, stories are told through subtle gestures, or through the gazes that travel between the characters, their maker, and the viewer.


Drawing has always been at the core of my work, and I continue to believe that simply making marks on paper or scratching into paint are worthwhile and relevant things to do. Given the infinite choices in contemporary art practice, I value the limits I've placed on materials and scale, and find within those limits there's a mine of expressive possibilities. As I keep making marks, reducing the complex to simple, the stories emerge through filters of memory and imagination. Change a mark, ever so slightly, and there's another story.