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Karin Doleske at Studio Vogue Gallery by rm vaughan, The Globe and Mail, September 11, 2010
Until Oct. 2. 274 Avenue Rd., Toronto; www.studiovoguegallery.com
You will be forgiven if Karin Doleske’s new suite of oils on canvas, Algoma Paintings, reminds you, at first, of abstracted landscapes. There’s the title, a nod to the vast tracks of land north of Sault Ste. Marie, and then there are the paintings themselves – hard-lined abstracts that resemble geological forms, tectonic plates colliding.
But Doleske describes her paintings, with their torn and mended canvases and jarring, multi-layered lines of colour, as being much more about the interiors of the mind than the exteriors of the granite-hard north.
“The paintings are based on what I’ve seen around me, in the district, and stuff in my own life, experiences I’ve had here – and I thought, well, I’ll address this, but I don’t want to dissect anything or go on a tirade.”
“When paint is applied to the torn canvas, it creates these raised surfaces, like wounds, cuts healing. I figure that’s pretty well life – you go through life, but the wounds still show. I decided to concentrate on Algoma’s people in these works. There’s a lot of artists up here doing landscapes, and it’s great work, and visitors are always so excited by the land, but they take the people here for granted. I can do landscapes, but I’m not interested.”
Bristling with stripes of feral colour and contorted by bending, inward-spiralling polygonal shapes (not to mention the sutured canvases), Doleske’s paintings invite psychological projection by the viewer. Who hasn’t sometimes felt they are falling down a twisting well, or engulfed by too much movement and colour?
The Algoma Paintings are Rorschach blots made with candy and steel.
~ R M Vaughan, Globe and Mail, Saturday September 11, 2010
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