Doug Voorby - Evocative Narratives
Newcastle artist Doug Voorby transforms familiar landscapes, interiors and urban spaces into poetic, dreamlike narratives inviting curiosity, contemplation and personal interpretation.
A dreamlike landscape where architecture, celestial forms and a solitary figure create a quiet stage for imagination. Rather than presenting a fixed story, Doug invites viewers to consider their own emotional and symbolic connections.
Artist: Doug Voorby
Medium: Acrylic on Board
Artwork Size: 600 x 900mm
Frame: Floating Frame in Solid Oak
Veda’s Child
Doug transforms the overlooked architecture of Watt Street into a quiet arrangement of lines, surfaces and remembered spaces. The work is recognisably Newcastle, yet open enough for viewers to bring their own urban memories.
Artist: Doug Voorby
Medium: Ink Pen and Acrylic on Board
Artwork Size: 600 x 900mm
Frame: Floating Frame in Solid Oak
Inner City Newcastle, Watt St.
A worn red sofa becomes the central character in a carefully staged interior. Reclamation considers memory, endurance and the way familiar objects retain emotional presence as the environments around them change.
Artist: Doug Voorby
Medium: Acrylic on Board
Artwork Size: 900 x 600mm
Frame: Floating Frame in Solid Oak
Reclamation
A path, an unseen staircase and the suggestion of a moving figure create a scene filled with anticipation. Doug offers the beginning of a story, leaving its meaning and destination to the viewer.
Artist: Doug Voorby
Medium: Ink Pen and Acrylic on Board
Artwork Size: 750 x 600mm
Frame: Floating Frame in Solid Oak
Woman descending a Staircase on a Windswept Day.
A lone viewer watches an intimate moment unfold on screen. Referencing Hopper and Magritte, Doug explores distance, desire and the layered experience of watching others while remaining unseen.
Artist: Doug Voorby
Medium: Ink Pen and Acrylic on Board
Artwork Size: 600 x 900mm
Frame: Floating Frame in Solid Oak
Screen Kiss (Homage to Hopper and Magritte).
A quiet reflection on age, memory and the passage of time. Shell-like forms, open sky and a partially seen figure create an intimate image that remains open to each viewer's experience.
Artist: Doug Voorby
Medium: Ink Pen and Wash on Board
Artwork Size: 520 x 670mm
Frame: Floating Frame in Solid Oak
60 years of Age
A familiar Hamilton North site becomes quietly magical at night. The luminous tree dominates the built environment, creating a powerful tension between natural presence, human boundaries and memory of place.
Artist: Doug Voorby
Medium: Ink Pen and Acrylic on Board
Artwork Size: 450 x 620mm
Frame: Floating Frame in Solid Oak
Depot at Night, Clyde St. Hamilton North.
Doug Voorby
There are paintings that tell a story, and there are paintings that ask you to create your own.
In Evocative Narratives, Newcastle artist Doug Voorby transforms familiar streets, interiors and landscapes into quiet theatrical spaces where memory and imagination can take over. The natural and built environments continually meet, overlap and interrupt one another, creating scenes that feel both recognisable and slightly removed from everyday reality.
After recently retiring from a long career as a classroom and art teacher with the NSW Department of Education, Doug has returned to painting full-time. This new collection revisits themes first explored through pen, ink and coloured pencil works created from 1978 to 1988, now developed through acrylic, ink and wash on board.
Across seven works, local architecture, domestic interiors, cinema spaces and nighttime streetscapes become the starting points for open-ended narratives. A lone viewer sits before a screen. A worn sofa holds the emotional weight of an empty room. A familiar Hamilton North depot is transformed beneath a luminous tree.
Doug does not prescribe a single interpretation. Instead, each work provides visual clues and emotional atmosphere, allowing viewers to connect through their own memories and experiences. Evocative Narratives is an exhibition to spend time with—one that continues to reveal itself through repeated looking.