Douglas Black North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

• 
• 
• 
• 

  Back to profiles Invite to apply

Douglas Black is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in North Yorkshire. Working across papercut, printmaking, mosaic and participatory practice, he creates contemporary artworks inspired by landscape, folklore and ecology while exploring inclusive authorship through public art, exhibitions and collaborative projects.

Douglas Black is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. His practice spans papercut, printmaking, mosaic, public art and participatory practice, creating work that moves between the gallery, the public realm and community settings.

Most of his papercuts begin freehand. Rather than working from a detailed drawing, he cuts directly into the paper, allowing the image to emerge through the process itself. Shapes evolve, connect and grow as he works, creating compositions that sit between observation, memory, imagination and discovery.

His work draws on landscape, folklore, myth and the natural world. Some pieces respond to particular places, such as The Strid on the River Wharfe near Bolton Abbey. Others emerge from patterns, stories and forms found in nature. He is interested in how simple shapes can evoke movement, atmosphere and emotion, balancing careful observation with abstraction to create works that reward sustained looking.

Many works combine recognisable subjects with more abstract forms. A composition may begin with a flower, a tree, a river or a fragment of folklore before developing into something more symbolic. Repeated forms, intricate patterns and strong contrasts encourage the eye to move through the image, revealing unexpected relationships and visual rhythms.

Alongside his studio practice, Douglas creates public artworks and collaborative projects across Yorkshire. Recent commissions include Lighting the Lanes, a permanent public artwork for Hemsworth Library developed through extensive community collaboration, and an 8,000-tile mosaic of Frida Kahlo created with disabled artists from Artizan alongside members of the wider community. His work has also been exhibited nationally and developed in partnership with museums, galleries, theatres, festivals and arts organisations.

Across both his studio and collaborative practice, Douglas is interested in the relationships between people and place, making and meaning, and the ways individual contributions can come together to create something greater than their separate parts. These ideas have led him to explore inclusive authorship as both an artistic and ethical approach to contemporary practice while continuing to develop his own visual language through making. They also inform his practice-led PhD, which examines equitable and inclusive approaches to creating contemporary art.

Whether creating a papercut, a public artwork or a collaborative commission, Douglas is interested in how individual marks, shapes and contributions can form a coherent whole without losing their distinct identity. Through this process, his work seeks to reveal connections between craft, ecology, memory and shared experience.