2014 Catalogue Archive

Canadian artist Kim Dorland’s work explores memory, nostalgia, and the psychology of the outsider. New Father comes from a series called Red Deer, Alberta that pulls inspiration from memories of his adolescence and the landscapes he occupied while growing up in Alberta, Canada. In this work, the thickly painted figure sits on a log, drinking beer in a scene that seems melancholic and eerie. The underpainting of fluorescent colors radiate out from heavily applied oil paint. At first, the figure appears to be rendered in detail, but closer inspection reveals that the face is nothing but globs of paint, playing both with the viewer’s expectations and conventions of figure and landscape painting. Dorland’s work has been exhibited internationally and is included in significant collections such as the Richard Prince collection; Musée d’art con¬tem¬po¬rain de Montréal; Museum of Con¬tem¬po¬rary Art San Diego; Blan¬ton Museum of Art at the Uni¬ver¬sity of Texas; The Glen¬bow Museum, Calgary; The Mon¬tréal Museum of Fine Arts; and Oppen¬heimer Col¬lec¬tion, Ner-man Museum of Con¬tem¬po¬rary Art, Kansas City.