Douglas Arthur Lew

Douglas Lew December 25, 1931 - December 20, 2025 Doug Lew passed away peacefully on December 20, 2025 at N.C. Little Hospice in Edina, MN just five days short of his 94th birthday with his children at his side. Born in Shanghai, China where, like all school children, he trained extensively in calligraphy, Doug came to the United States at age 15 where he finished high school and earned his MFA from Bradley University in Peoria, IL. It was there that he by chance met his wife Linda of 60 years as she was painting a theatre set for a summer stock production of Finian's Rainbow. Doug's professional career as Creative Art Director for advertising agencies in New York, Columbus, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis coincided with the glamorous, creative, high-pressure world of television's Mad Men. Except Doug did not sell dreams; he believed the dreams with an integrity that earned him awards and accolades for print and TV commercials for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Cub Foods, and Perkins Restaurant among many other clients. But it was Doug's post-professional career as a watercolorist where he truly flourished. Art was Doug's life, and Doug's life was a work of art. Watercolor was his chosen medium for its fluidity, motion, life. His subjects included but were not limited to figures, landscapes, interiors, sports, dance, abstracts. Upon relocating from Los Angeles to Minneapolis in 1974 Doug soon discovered artist Florence Hill's life-drawing cooperative in the California Building in NE Minneapolis where every Sunday for 50 years Doug and fellow artists would gather and draw from a live model. A powerhouse herself, Florence organized extended trips to Brittany, France where artists lived cooperatively in a farmhouse cooking, keeping house, and painting en plein air. Doug and Linda's letters to their daughter Cindy in 1990 brought that experience to life with descriptions of late nights, community meals, local wine, laughter, unscreened windows, and impossibly enormous blue hydrangeas. In 1992 Doug and Linda had the good fortune to rent a friend's house in the heart of Florence, Italy. Settling down to live as locals for a month Doug found himself painting not historical sights but ordinary things that captured the look, smell, and feel of Florence. Evidence of Doug's talent and love of watercolors are everywhere: In galleries, exhibitions, businesses, institutions, theatres, homes, private collections. www.douglew.com . His legacy is vast with books, videos, honors, awards, signature memberships in art societies, publications, an Adjunct Professorship at the University of MN. Despite his numerous recognitions and achievements, his children Brian and Cindy remember him as Dad: Impractical, guileless, trusting to a fault. On a vacation to Palm Springs in 1969 Doug and Brian drove into the desert to play "Lawrence of Arabia" where their tires sank in the sand necessitating a rescue. Growing up with an artist father the lines between Art and Life are blurred. Doug loved his family, his friends, his home, a good meal as much as he loved art. He didn't just practice art, he lived it. "I strive to achieve a sense of force and lightness, of energy and ease, a careful carelessness, and a sense of the poetic". Doug was preceded in death by his beloved wife Linda, his parents, his sisters, and his brothers-in law. He is survived by his daughter Cindy (Bob) Severt, son Brian Lew, nieces and nephews in Hawaii, California, Alaska, Illinois. A commemoration and celebration of Doug's life will be held at Washburn-McReavy Edina Funeral Chapel in spring 2026.

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Douglas Arthur Lew

December 25, 1931 - December 20, 2025

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