T. L. Douveres - Visionary Doof Artist (1862-1942)
Self taught artist and self proclaimed Doof visionary, T.L. Douveres (1862-1942), painted fantasies of the Doof, creating a world where the Doof was part of nature and its seasonal life cycle. Douveres saw the Doof as fruit on the trees, birds in the air and small woodland creatures inhabiting carefully painted California inspired landscapes. After being a file clerk in a San Francisco law firm for thirty years, Douveres retired and moved with his wife, to the Alhambra Valley, some thirty miles north where he took up landscape painting. He had begun to sell his paintings and eventually had work in a number of galleries. But after being struck by lightening in a freakish summer thunderstorm while on an artistic retreat in the Sierras, Douveres, miraculously unscathed, returned to his studio and began to repaint all of his canvases adding Doof birds, Doof animals and Doof vegetation.
Douveres immersed himself into his newly created world. After this irrational change, the sales of his paintings ebbed and then dried up altogether. Douveres kept painting his Doof world despite the constant urging by his wife that their money was running out. Douveres ignored these pleas and his wife eventually had to have him institutionalized. Douveres continued to paint Doofs while in the asylum, giving paintings to his fellow inmates and medical staff until one day in spring he put down his brushes because suddenly he was convinced he was Napoleon Bonaparte. Douveres gave up painting for conquering Europe. He died in quiet exile a few months later.