10/16/2025

Artist Talk with Douglas Galloway
Saturday, October 18 | 2–4pm at MixHaus Gallery

The act of truly seeing an artwork—of slowing down and allowing ourselves to meet it with curiosity and vulnerability—is as much an inward journey as it is an appreciation of the artist’s expression or technical mastery. In Douglas Galloway’s current exhibition at MixHaus Gallery, The Return: A West Texas Retrospective, this invitation to see and feel deeply is at the heart of the experience.

Galloway’s mixed-media works are born from vivid memories of visiting his father’s family in Sweetwater, Texas, where red dirt, vast skies, and long, lonely highways etch themselves into the soul. His work translates those sensory impressions into a visual language of texture and color: layers of rust and clay, pale or vivid washes of light, and the suggestion of distance that evokes both isolation and belonging. To stand before his panels is to feel the wind and heat of that land, and to sense its emotional weight—the way a landscape can hold both love and loss, both beauty and ache.

When artists mine their personal histories, they often tap into something collective. Galloway’s return to his West Texas roots becomes a mirror for any of us who have wrestled with the contradictions of home—its tenderness and its loss, its pull and its distance. Art like this does not tell us what to feel; it opens a space where our own stories rise to meet it.

Douglas Galloway | "Listening to the whispers of the wind as it weaves through the branches of the cottonwood" 24.75 x 24.75 x 2"

Douglas Galloway | "We arrived to find the air filled with the scent of freshly tilled soil and its aroma wrapped around us like a familiar embrace"  60.75 x 60.75 x 2"

Douglas Galloway | "It was a place where yucca and agave grew wild and untamed"  36.75 x 36.75 x 2"

Why Seeing Art in Person Matters

In a chaotic digital world, we often forget what it means to stand face-to-face with an original artwork. The scale, the surface, the subtle variations of light and texture—these can’t be fully experienced on a screen. When we see art in person, we participate in a quiet dialogue with the artist. We sense their hand, their breath, their human presence. And we find traces of ourselves in the layers they’ve left behind.

Douglas Galloway’s The Return is not just a visual retrospective—it’s an emotional one. It invites us to consider the landscapes that shaped us, the memories we carry in our bodies, and the ways those stories can connect us across time and distance.

Join us this Saturday, October 18, from 2–4pm at MixHaus Gallery for an afternoon with Douglas as he shares insights into his process, the memories that inspired this series, and the universal emotions that live within each piece. Come ready to see, to listen, and perhaps to rediscover your own reflection in the red earth of West Texas.

The exhibition runs through October 26. I hope you’ll join us in experiencing this powerful series before it disperses. 

— Cara Hines