Doug Billings was born as an air force brat, in Landstul, Germany. He lived in Europe till the age of ten, when the family moved to Marshfield, Wisconsin.

In college, Doug’s fascination for art took precedent over his other interests and he graduated with a BFA degree in Printmaking from Mankato State University, MN in 1978. He was accepted into the printmaking graduate program at Wichita State University by the prominent and respected printmaker Prof. David Bernard and graduated with his MFA degree in 1982.

Since then, he has continued to work steadily at his profession as a printmaker and has become a well-known fixture in the printmaking department at Wichita State, taking full advantage of the excellent facilities during the evenings and weekends. Starting out working mainly as an intaglio printmaker, he gradually turned his attention to the lithograph as his major "artistic medium."

He is the current President of Gallery XII, a Wichita artist’s cooperative gallery and is also a member and former President of the Artists Guild of Wichita. Recently Doug has been accepted into the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA) in New York, the Boston Printmakers of Boston, MA, the Print Consortium of Kansas City, MO., the American Print Alliance in Peachtree, GA., The Print Center in Philadelphia, PA., and the American Color Print Society, Princeton, NJ. Since 2002, Doug has been teaching classes in Printmaking at the Wichita Center for the Arts.

Artist Statement:

"My decision to become a printmaker began in college when I became immediately fascinated with the hands on processes inherent in the making of a print. It is art making which revolves around intense and sometimes complicated methods or processes that are almost impossible to control completely. Consequently the final or end result is rarely what was anticipated or visualized in the beginning; thus making printmaking an open ended and highly flexible form of image making that appealed to my creative needs. If some aspect of the work in progress is moving in an unexpected direction, the printmaker is encouraged and perhaps even required, to make adjustments and devise alternative methods. This organic aspect of printmaking along with its unpredictability creates an element of intrigue, which quite often leaves to unexpected and surprising results."