Vision and Essence

There’s a quaint vintage house in the center of downtown Peninsula. This 1830s Greek Revival post-and-beam-style home was originally the parsonage for the historic Bronson Church across the street. Now the property and its beautiful gardens are the home of Douglas Unger, a contemporary realist painter, his wife, Lois, and several resident cats. It has become a metaphor for the vision and essence of his art.

Nature translated into the artistic language is what they have built around them. The central theme is their home, and he continued building, adding the appropriate out-buildings in the original style of the past, including his barn and studios awash with northern light. Standing in the garden with lots of colors is like standing in the center of a painting and becoming part of it. Douglas and Lois work together to create that look, and visitors often stroll by to admire it.

George Innes, a 19th century Early Modern American landscape painter, once emerged from a “life after life” experience, saying he saw heightened color and simplified form, and called it essence. Similarly, Unger says that a painter considers the ground before painting the subject. For him, it boils down to that essence, the truest form, body and soul. “The content is relationship and

how people [communicate] with it, use it, treat it,” he says. According to definition, content is something expressed through some medium, as a work

of art or poem.

Unger’s family originated from Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia and moved to rural Ohio, where he grew up a farm boy. In high school, he met a “strong-willed art teacher.” With her encouragement, Unger attended The Cleveland Institute of Art where he excelled and graduated as a Page Scholar with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was assistant to the Dean and received a Master’s Degree from Syracuse University. He also studied on a scholarship with colorist painter, Henry Hensche, one of Charles Hawthorne’s best students, at his School of Art in Provincetown. He taught for 35 years at Kent State University, receiving the title of Professor Emeritus at retirement.

A strong passion for teaching was passed on to Unger from his high school art teacher and was evident during his KSU days. Currently, he teaches Pennsylvania Amish children through the use of pastels and paints, which he supplies. He loves the opportunity to paint Amish and Mennonite landscapes and enjoys the time he spends there. He considers himself more of an Appalachian and gives back to those who consider the earth their sustenance and home.

Recently, Unger has been painting numerous landscapes in different sizes in oil and pastel, getting ready for a solo exhibition in Indiana Amish country for Goshen College and Mennonite Museum, opening mid-September. Each painting invites the viewer to move in and look closely to observe beautiful patches of color, then step back to see how the colors integrate into one painting. 

Unger started out as a representational artist, in oil and pastel, but has expanded to become a more traditional craftsman in wood, making his own musical instruments. He sees a relationship of his instruments to his paintings. He creatively plots a two-dimensional “ground” on canvas for a painting, and he also places mother of pearl on a three-dimensional wood instrument. Essence is whatever most sums up the heart and soul of something, its truest, most indispensable qualities. He gives his heart and soul by how he communicates that to the viewer through his work.

He also loves Appalachian fiddle and banjo music. “I believe that the banjo is a wonderful form of artistic expression. Artists are also problem solvers.” During the 1970s, Unger was given a banjo by a friend who suggested, “you are an artist, go build one.” He was driven to make things, with a large curiosity to see if he could achieve an instrument that he could play—an instrument that contained aesthetics and history. He is a perfectionist and has to be highly focused with the highest level of skill, especially if he is going to sign the finished instrument.

Unger researched building instruments and found he loved working with the mother-of-pearl in-laid designs and etching on the necks of mandolins and guitars. His pearl work has an international following. He was fascinated by the beauty of folk music and instruments and wanted to play.

He learned that, like a painting, the instruments have to look effortless in their construction. But he also found that the harder it was to accomplish, the more he was pulled into it. He considers all his pieces—paintings, instruments, buildings and furniture—as “functional.” He says, “They are done or finished when there is no evidence of its doing. If you are holding an instrument, you can feel it come alive with the music.”

Unger brings history into the present through his artistry and music. “The pearl work is the hardest thing I do,” he says. “It is artistic freedom within a traditional framework.” Along with paintings in progress of various sizes displayed in the studio behind the barn on his Peninsula property, Unger’s instruments hang in his summer kitchen studio, carefully placed to create abstract designs that co-exist with antiques and hand-built furniture, appearing as three-dimensional collages.

“ Art is visual,” says Unger about the way he approaches art. “Though the craft can be taught, content cannot.” He has created a metaphor that expresses the vision and essence of that art. “Art is nature as seen through a temperament. Art’s relevant to what we do to come to terms with the formal issues in our lives.”