DOROTHY KNOWLES Flowers in the Landscape 1983 - 1984
DOROTHY KNOWLES Flowers in the Landscape 1983 - 1984
Interview with Dorothy Knowles and Michael Gibson Gallery February 2019
Personal Reflections by Robert Christie, Jonathan Forrest, Doug Maclean, Roald Nasgaard, Jeffrey Spalding and Karen Wilkin
Michael Gibson Gallery June 1 - 29, 2019
Red Flowers and Pink Landscape Oil on Canvas, 1983 30 x 40 in / 76 x 101 cm
Interview with Dorothy Knowles, February 2019
In August 2018, Michael Gibson visited the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan studios of Dorothy Knowles. At the farm studio, he discovered a series of rare floral still life paintings juxtaposed with landscapes painted by Knowles in the winters of 1983 and 1984. These previously undiscovered paintings have become the focus of our inaugural exhibition with Knowles. Known for expansive landscape paintings of the Canadian prairie, Knowles has always explored different subject matter and styles. Painting flowers, still lifes and gardens are not uncommon in her practice. However, for only those two winters, Knowles combined the contrasting elements of the landscape with beautifully arranged cut flowers in vases. Why? These unexpected and joyful paintings show Knowles’ willingness to push her own boundaries, even while working within an accepted landscape tradition. Dorothy Knowles introduces the paintings: “It was winter. I couldn’t get out to paint or go to Emma Lake, where I would work in the summer - so I bought flowers to paint still lifes and brought them into the studio. The studio was full of landscape paintings which created an unexpected backdrop. It intrigued me - it was kind of bizarre. It was the artifice of the bouquet against nature that appealed to me, and maybe a way of bringing summer into the cold prairie months”.
Before the winters of 1983 & 1984, had you ever painted still life paintings? Of course! Still life was a common subject matter for artists and an alternative to outdoor painting in the winter. Some artists painted outside in the winter but I never did, especially since I had little kids running around.
Why did you choose to paint flowers those two winters? I did not only paint flowers those two winters, I also painted landscapes. Sometimes you get a bouquet that is an inspiration. I also like to garden, to get out there in the dirt with nature. At first glance, it seems like the flowers might be on a window sill, with the prairie landscape pictured out the window. Can you describe how you came about the compositions? I would randomly place the flowers in the studio in front of landscape paintings and would paint what I found interesting. Sometimes I would move the flowers around a bit to see how the different placements affected each composition. I liked how the freshness of the flowers played against the more static subject of a painted landscape a landscape of a landscape really - and how the vertical and diagonal lines of the vase and the flowers worked with - or against - the strong horizontal of the landscape. So why did you not return to the same format again? The combination of flowers and landscape was a series I did those two winters because it was something different to do. In the summer I would be out painting in nature. Those winters, I started painting the still lifes, and the landscape kept creeping in. It piqued my interest. A line from the flowers would connect with a line from a hill or a road - it was a natural extension. But once I had explored that format, that was it, and I never returned to it again. The combinations of flowers are quite diverse in each bouquet. You combine lilies, roses, tulips, carnations, amaryllis, lupines. Some of these flowers are hard to find in the winter. Did you choose the flowers and assemble the bouquets yourself? Was it random? Or deliberate? I purchased what was available from local florists and what I liked the look of. I enjoy the contrast between textures and shapes. Tulips were always interesting because they
tended to move around in the vase. Chrysanthemums and carnations tended to last longer. Sometimes I assembled the bouquets myself and sometimes they were flowers received as gifts. There are a number of watercolour still lifes also included in the exhibition. I painted with whatever medium I felt like at the time. The watercolors were not studies for the canvases, rather, an immediate response to whatever I was looking at. They were a respite from the dreary winter. What effect did you want to create with the juxtaposition of flower bouquet & landscape? I wanted an arrangement that resulted in a composition that was interesting in some way: dramatic perhaps, or where there was a contrast between the pinks and yellows of the flowers with the greens in the landscape. In the paintings “Flowers Between Two Paintings” and “Flowers and Landscapes”, the vases are placed in between two different landscapes and separated by a neutral colour. Why did you make that decision? I tried different variations on the theme. Musicians do that a lot. The blank canvas in the background was off-white and the neutral color did set off the vivid hues of the bouquets. Our exhibition is the first time these paintings have been shown. Why do you think that is? Usually galleries selected the more traditional straight landscape paintings or floral paintings for shows, but I had fun painting these. I’m happy to see them displayed so that I can stand back and get a more distant perspective on the series, to see them stand as a whole. Michael’s discovery of the paintings helped me rediscover them, too.
Interview conducted between Carol Perehudoff, Dorothy Knowles and the Michael Gibson Gallery in February 2019.
I first encountered Dorothy Knowles’ work when I was a newly hired curator, fairly new to Canada, at the Edmonton Art Gallery, now the Art Gallery of Alberta, in 1971. I had inherited an exhibition, West ’71, from my predecessor, a juried survey selected by Kenneth Lochhead. I was impressed then by the freshness and directness of Ms. Knowles’ ambitious, large landscape and I’ve continued to be impressed by those qualities ever since. (I can’t remember if Ms. Knowles’ painting was one selected for an award, but I believe the EAG purchased that canvas, as well as one by her husband, William Perehudoff, the first works by both artists to enter the collection.) Soon after that introduction, I began to visit studios in Saskatchewan and was invited, for the first time, to be a guest critic to the Emma Lake Workshop, near the Knowles-Perehudoff summer cottage. Over the years, as I continued to frequent both Ms. Knowles’ studio and her husband’s, a close friendship developed, along with my growing admiration for both artists’ work. I regard Dorothy Knowles as one of the finest perceptual painters in North America, someone who has extended and revitalized a long tradition that, in the early years of her life as an artist, had been largely subsumed by abstraction. Ms. Knowles’ insistence on following a highly individual direction has contributed greatly to the continuity and health of Canada’s long tradition of landscape painters and has influenced many younger artists. She’s also a fine painter of still lifes, especially of flowers, treating bouquets as surrogate landscapes – as small-scale indoor gardens. The flower paintings have all the liveliness and spontaneity of the landscapes and often, explore a range of hues more varied and rich than the landscapes. They help to confirm Ms. Knowles’ place in the pantheon of modern day North American painters. Karen Wilkin New York-Based Independent Curator & Art Critic Detail of “Flowers”, Oil on Canvas, 1984
Flowers Oil on Canvas, 1984 48 x 48 in / 122 x 122 cm
Red Flowers and Landscape Oil on Canvas, 1983 46 x 48 in / 117 x 122 cm
Flowers, River and Birds Oil on Canvas, 1983 46 x 48 in / 117 x 122 cm
Dorothy Knowles has been steadfast and consistent. Her works are illuminated by the even-handed soft light of midday. Her colour, touch and timbre are redolent of place. The tenderness and delicacy of her paint application is a gentle caress. The works of Dorothy Knowles express her contentment; she is faithful to the values of cherishing small pleasures. Like the quiet, thoughtful restraint and understatement of David Milne, Saskatchewan is her painting place. Even her foray into still life is grounded by the warm embrace of the prairie fields. Her work reminds that to be heard better you need not be louder, but sometimes speak softer. Jeffrey Spalding Curator
There are numerous factors that define Dorothy’s work and serve to separate her from the majority of her peers. One of the most critical for me is her ability to suggest what I’ll call “air” in her paintings. She has an inherent visual sensitivity to the space around and between objects in an environment and technical ability to suggest it. As much as she incorporates diminishing scale and textural differences to suggest depth, she is a master in the use of what the Italian’s call “sfumato” (the use of tonal variations) to imply the gradual and very subtle changes that the eye perceives as we look into the distance. Dorothy doesn’t just depict or represent her subject matter, instead she makes the viewer believe that they are actually experiencing it. Robert Christie Artist
Detail of “Flowers Between Two Paintings”, Oil on Canvas, 1983
Flowers Between Two Paintings Oil on Canvas, 1983 36 x 48 in / 91 x 122 cm
Flowers and Landscapes Oil on Canvas, March 1983 44 x 48 in / 111 x 122 cm
The public image of Dorothy has always seemed at odds with the studio reality. Dorothy has always struck me as a painter’s painter masquerading as a conventional artist. Known for her grand landscape vistas it’s impressive to see her break the confines of her success and stay open - willing to try anything. She changes medium seemingly at will watercolour, charcoal, acrylic stain, thick oil impasto, canvas, linen, paper - and changes subject matter from her well known landscapes to still-lifes, even to eccentric portraits of friends and family. It’s been a delight to watch and learn from her excellent example. Jonathan Forrest Artist
Dorothy Knowles is definitely the finest woman landscape painter in the country, and should be remembered as exactly that. There is no other who has pursued her subject with such diligence and devotion. Doug Maclean Canadian Art Dealer
Dorothy Knowles’ life-long subject is the landscape of the Canadian west. She has traveled the prairies and into the Rockies and continued onwards to the Pacific Ocean. But above all it is the parklands of northern Saskatchewan, their rolling plains and the rivers and valleys cutting into them that she has studied with loving attentiveness. This is her Algonquin Park and her north of Lake Superior. It is a farmed land, and yet too vast to walk, its horizons lying only at the distance encompassed by the imagination. Roald Nasgaard Curator Detail of “Pink and White”, Oil on Canvas, 1984
Pink and White Oil on Canvas, 1984 30 x 24 in / 76 x 61 cm
A Small Bouquet Oil on Canvas, 1984 30 x 24 in / 76 x 61 cm
Flowers on Grey Oil on Canvas, 1984 20 x 32 in / 50 x 81 cm
Cathy’s Bouquet Oil on Canvas, 1984 40 x 24 in / 101 x 61 cm
Red and Yellow Flowers Watercolour on Paper, 1993 30 x 22 in / 76 x 55 cm
Roses Watercolour on Paper, 1993 30 x 22 in / 76 x 55 cm
Dorothy Knowles Biography
Recognized as one of Canada’s most respected landscape painters, Dorothy Knowles was born in 1927 in the town of Unity, Saskatchewan, where the family divided their time between a farm west of Unity and the city of Saskatoon. She first studied biology in 1944 at the University of Saskatchewan and was encouraged by a friend to take her first summer art course at Emma Lake in 1948. The course was led by Saskatoon artist Reta Cowley and James Frederick Finley from the Ontario College of Art. It was here that Knowles was inspired to pursue painting as a career. She continued her art studies at the University of Saskatchewan, the Banff School of Fine Arts and in 1951 at the Goldsmith School of Art in London, UK. The year 1951 was also the year that she married the celebrated Canadian color-field artist William Perehudoff. They went on to become prominent figures in Canada’s art scene and significant members of the Saskatchewan arts community. A turning point in Knowles’ career came at an Emma Lake Artists’ Workshop in 1962 when the American critic, Clement Greenberg, encouraged her to pursue painting from nature regardless of the contemporary predominance of abstraction. Dorothy Knowles was a regular participant at the Emma Lake workshops and became so connected with the landscape of the lake that the family purchased a cottage there in 1969 and set up studios for both Knowles and Perehudoff. Ultimately, and most importantly, Knowles discovered the joy of working directly from nature. When weather permitted, and using her van as a portable studio, Knowles worked outside, producing finished paintings, sketches and photographs of the prairie skies, fields, lakes and forests surrounding her home. Over her seven-decade long career, Knowles has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally. Her work was included in the “7th Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Detail of “Flowers, River and Birds”, Oil on Canvas, 1983
Painting” at the National Gallery of Canada (1968), and in the Hirshhorn Museum of the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibit “14 Canadians: A Critic’s Choice” (1977). In 1983, her work was part of a group exhibition called “Five From Saskatchewan” that traveled to London, Paris, and Brussels. She has received three major touring exhibitions, first in 1972. In 1982, “Dorothy Knowles: 1964-1982”, was organized by the Edmonton Art Gallery and Bruce Grenville curated a touring show in 1994. Most recently her work was seen at the new Remai Modern in “III: HeavyShield, Knowles, Cameron-Weir”. In 1987 Dorothy was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and in 2004 named a Member of the Order of Canada, denoting an achievement of outstanding citizenship and service to both Canada and to the international community. In 2012 she won the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and in 2017 received the Senate of Canada Sesquicentennial Medal. Her paintings are in countless corporate and public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Mendel Art Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery and Boston Museum. Dorothy Knowles is never without her paint set and brushes. She was once asked what five factors she believed were vital for a good life. She responded, “I guess my five have been painting, painting, painting, painting, and painting.” She lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with studios in both Saskatoon and Emma Lake.
DOROTHY KNOWLES Flowers in the Landscape 1983 - 1984
Catalogue of an exhibition at Michael Gibson Gallery June 1 - 29, 2019
Thank you to Dorothy Knowles, Catherine Fowler, Carol Perehudoff and Rebecca Perehudoff Also, many thanks to Robert Christie, Jonathan Forrest, Doug Maclean, Roald Nasgaard, Jeffrey Spalding and Karen Wilkin for their personal reflections about Dorothy’s life and work
For Dorothy Knowles’ complete Curriculum Vitae, please visit www.gibsongallery.com
Front Cover Image: detail of Red Flowers and Landscape, Oil on Canvas, 1983 Back Cover Image: Photograph of the South Saskatchewan river at the Knowles / Perehudoff farm studio taken by Michael Gibson, August 2018
Design Michael Gibson Gallery Artwork Images © Dorothy Knowles Printed Carter’s Printing Inc., London, ON ISBN 978-0-9951984-2-5
Michael Gibson Gallery 157 Carling St London On N6A 1H5 5 1 9 . 4 3 9 . 0 4 5 1 1. 8 6 6 . 6 4 4 . 2 7 6 6
www.gibsongallery.com
