Douglas Aagard is a Utah landscape painter known for his use of color, texture, and light. He currently resides in a rural central Utah community with his wife and three children. His subject matter is as varied as the Utah landscape itself. From the high mountain pines and aspens to sage and cedars - with a whole lot of farmland in between. He enjoys fishing, camping, working in his garden, and spending time with his family. Aagard has been a full-time artist since 2002. His education includes General Education and drawing classes at Snow College and Salt Lake Community College. He also studied for a year with Utah watercolor artist Harold Peterson, which he says made a world of difference in how he approached art. His instruction has come primarily from studying great art and consulting other artists. Aagard began his career as a watercolor artist in 2000. However, after attending a show of paintings by Gary Ernest Smith he was hooked on the powerful possibilities that oil paints have to offer. With encouragement and feedback from Smith, Aagard commenced to paint with oils and a palette knife. He says that he never gets bored painting with oil. There are so many possibilities, so many techniques to try that one could never exhaust the love of learning. Aagard found that his work has a more dimensional feel or depth when painted with a knife, and often the texture is just as fun as the composition. His paintings have won several state and local awards. Aagard’s pieces are part of many museums, public, private, and corporate collections. He has done solo exhibitions in Park City, Alpine, Ogden, and Provo-Utah; Palm Desert-California, Ruidoso-New Mexico; and Scottsdale-Arizona. He was featured in Southwest Art in “Best of the West” in November 2005 and 2006. Other accolades include Western Art Collector Magazine in November 2007, Art of the West magazine in 2013, and Southwest Art magazine in June 2017. Additionally, in October of 2019, Aagard and Liz Wolf were featured for their two-person show in American Art Collector. One of his pieces was published in a Houghton-Mifflin textbook to complement a poem by Robert Frost.