Doran Gabriel McGee, a beloved Berkeley artist known as Doran Dada who created vibrant murals and visual dreamscapes showcasing Black culture, died of pancreatic cancer on Jan. 15. He was 59.
McGee grew up in the Bay Area and was a Berkeley High graduate, where he was an avid runner. He came from a family of artists and entertainers, and his grandfather was noted musician and composer, Earl Solomon Burroughs, known as Jack Hammer.
He drew from Egyptian folk art, pop art, Black and African traditions to create colorful tapestries and murals that dotted East Bay walls. His art was also displayed at Oakland First Friday events, as well as the de Young Open exhibit last fall alongside work from over 800 Bay Area creators.
In March 2023, he adorned the boarded-up doors of the Regal UA movie theater in downtown Berkeley with a temporary mural centering the Egyptian goddess Isis in an colorful art deco style based on one of his NFT designs.
Earlier the same year, the City Council honored his “God Shu on his Flying Chariot” mural at 3163 Adeline St. in South Berkeley with an unveiling ceremony.
In an interview with the Daily Californian last year, McGee said he wanted to highlight Black art and communities through his work, and fight misconceptions and anger directed toward them.
“With my art, I’m definitely making a statement about Black identity and Black history, who we are and where we come from,” McGee told the paper.
According to posts from loved ones on social media, McGee spent much of the 1990s in Europe and was involved in the Amsterdam art scene, where he was a video jockey. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and a Master of Computer Arts from Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
In an Amsterdam newspaper’s profile, which he shared on his social media last summer, McGee was quoted as saying he felt an affinity for Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, and that while Haring “was very important for the ’80s, I want to define the ’90s.”
Daniel Piotr Rozenberg, who befriended McGee at Amsterdam’s Roxy Club and stayed in touch over the decades, wrote in a Facebook post last week, “In the nineties, Doran’s big hero was Basquiat and to me he felt like a modern day version of Jean-Michel, combining painting on canvas with the aesthetics of nineties video games.”
Upon returning to the Bay Area, he was part of the Burning Man community and created artwork for the Mysteryland Festival at the Woodstock grounds in New York. McGee worked as both an animator and graphic artist before returning to painting, his family said.
“[COVID-19] started and he grabbed his sketchbook, started painting, and never looked back since,” Rozenberg said. “He also started making murals and started being truly successful at it. It was so great to see him flourish and finally starting to really find the beautiful spot in this world which he so deserved!”
McGee was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in June 2023, and his family began raising funding for his treatment. The GoFundMe, initially created for medical expenses, has now been updated to help pay for his funeral and memorial services, and to support his wife, Marina, and two young children, Cierra and Eden.
The family has created a memorial site for anyone who wants to share memories of McGee. His work is still available to purchase at his Doran Dada online store.
