skin to skin
Douglas Breault
Anderson Gallery
August 24 - October 23, 2026
Artist Reception and Talk, September 16, 2026: 4-6pm
The Wallace L. Anderson Gallery is pleased to announce skin to skin, a solo exhibition of new work by Bridgewater State University alumnus and studio art professor Douglas Breault. This new body of photographs and sculptures navigates love, fear, and human connection through the lens of fatherhood. His works form a world where such circulating thoughts and worries have become inescapably intertwined; the visual patchwork of landscapes, objects, and natural environments that emerge brim with speculation about how beautifully haunting time can be. This work unfolds from witnessing Breault’s identity evolve, and collecting those tangled threads to see what tethers his world together.
skin to skin refers to the practice of placing a newborn directly against a parent's chest immediately after birth. In this first embrace and shared heartbeat, a tactile language develops before words. The exhibition consists of densely layered silver gelatin photographs and mixed-media sculptures that weave together a personal archive in a related tactile language. Breault’s son is on the autism spectrum, which has invited a deeper inquiry into how touch, nonverbal communication, and shared exploration shape our relationship and reveal the magnetic connections between our lives and the natural world.
Featured works, imbued with a sense of densely shadowed, cosmological wonder, were made over a summer where Breault was a stay-at-home parent to two children under five. Learning to raise relentlessly curious beings transformed the way he experiences time, attuning him to the awe of seeing the world for the first time within a protected, contained space. Working alone in the darkroom at night became a rare space for him to discover connections between images and memory, the personal and the universal. The archive was gathered using a variety of cameras and processes, including large-format film and iPhone digital negatives, avoiding hierarchies of photographic precision in favor of openness and abstraction through process.
Following the direction of photographic chemistry, similar to the logic of play, these works intentionally disrupt traditional darkroom techniques, embracing streaks of light, blurred forms, layered exposures, and veils of acrylic paint. Each piece emerges through a balance of intention and chance, resulting in a singular photographic object that can never be precisely repeated. This body of work is ongoing, akin to a family photo album where an interplay of narrative and lyrical images explores the unconstrained curiosities of childhood and life while reckoning with loss and mortality.