The Black Drawings of Duncan Simcoe, 2014-2024 Night Visions

Night Visions
The Black Drawings 
of Duncan Simcoe 2014-2024

August 29 - November 9, 2024
Opening Reception: August 29, 4-6pm

Duncan Simcoe is a Southern California artist and former program chair of the College of Architecture, Visual Arts, and Design at California Baptist University in Riverside. The Bay Area figurative painter, Richard Diebenkorn (1922 – 1993), was a huge influence on Simcoe, informing his choice of subjects and bridging the realms of abstraction and representation. Simcoe infuses his paintings with a metaphorical sensibility informed by his cultural interests and commitment to his Eastern Orthodox Christian faith.

Simcoe’s fortuitous discovery of industrial-grade tar paper as a support for his paintings streamlined his production. He tacks a sheet onto the wall of his studio and works directly on its surface. The tar paper also enables him to reduce his palette of colors, maximizing the contrast between the black substrate and the brightly colored paints. As Simcoe experimented with tar paper, he exploited the inversion of a traditional white substrate for an inky blackness. His oil paints took on an uncanny phosphorescence, as if the scene were viewed through “night vision” goggles. His paintings often contemplate the darker realms of Christian narratives, illuminated by the artist’s mystic’s sensibility. Rather than focusing on particular subjects, his work explores personal and historical situations, often through a spiritual lens. The resulting images are extraordinary.

Simcoe's works are held in numerous private and public collections, notably including the Vatican Museums' Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Independent curator and art historian Gordon L. Fuglie serves as guest curator for the exhibition. California Baptist helped fund the exhibition along with other generous supporters, including Kent and Heidi Anderson Butler, Sandra Bowden, Dirk Dallas, Judy L. Larson, Ken and Francie Jewesson, Christopher and Benjamin Pagdilao, Theodore and Catherine Prescott, and Marcia Rickard and Dennis Doordan.