Doug Safranek moved to Brooklyn, in 1984 after receiving a M.F.A from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Living and painting in a working class neighborhood, he was immediately struck by the “the clashing contrasts of the big city, and the diversity of the people and structures within.” Using the traditional medium of egg tempera (a mix of egg yolk and dried pigment) innovatively and meticulously, Safranek’s paintings capture the vibrancy and aesthetic of the cityscape.

Safranek first began to work in egg tempera at the suggestion of his teacher John Wilde and was further encouraged by the art historian James Watrous. Watrous had known the regionalist painters of the thirties and provided him with the pigments used by Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry. Safranek says that using the paints connects him to history and the link is also apparent in his urban subjects, which are in the rich tradition of the early twentieth-century realists.

Safranek’s works have been featured in solo exhibitions in New York, Washington, and Wisconsin. His paintings are in the collection of The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York among others.