Qualities of Light: The Work of Dorothy Knowles

Qualities of Light: The Work of Doroth y Knowles

Q UALIT É S LU M I N EUSES : L’ OE U V RE D E D ORO T HY KNO W LES La Maison Heffel est honorée d’annoncer qu’elle représente maintenant l’œuvre de Dorothy Knowles à Toronto et à Vancouver.

Pour célébrer cette occasion, une exposition couvrant l’ensemble de sa carrière aura lieu à Heffel Toronto, et débutera le 8 septembre.

vernissage Jeudi 8 septembre 2022 18 h – 20 h

Veuillez RSVP

exposition 8 au 24 septembre 2022 Heffel Toronto

13 Hazelton Avenue sur rendez-vous Tous les lots peuvent être vus en ligne au Heffel.com/gallery Pour plus d’information et pour RSVP au vernissage, veuillez contacter : Daniel Gallay daniel@heffel.com 416-915-4076

Qualities of Light: The Work of Dorothy Knowles Heffel is incredibly honoured to announce the representation of the work of Dorothy Knowles in Toronto and Vancouver.

To mark the occasion, a career-spanning exhibition will take place at Heffel Toronto, opening September 8.

opening reception Thursday, September 8, 2022 6 – 8 PM

Please RSVP

exhibition September 8 – 24, 2022 Heffel Toronto

13 Hazelton Avenue by appointment All works can be viewed online at Heffel.com/gallery For more information and to RSVP for the Opening Reception please contact: Daniel Gallay daniel@heffel.com 416-915-4076

f ro n t cov e r /co uv e rtur e ava n t :

Candle Lake (OC-042-84) oil on linen, 1984 48 x 48 in, 121.9 x 121.9 cm

D o rot h y K n ow l es : C h a n g i n g H i sto ry modernism and landscape painting in Canada have been fused ever since Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven went outdoors to paint views of distinctively Canadian places. In doing so, the official story tells us, they forged a distinctively Canadian modern art. Add Emily Carr, David Milne and Goodridge Roberts to the lineage and it is impossible to ignore the importance of landscape to 20th century painting north of the 49th parallel. But this narrative depends almost exclusively on images of Ontario, Quebec and the West Coast. The vast expanses, brilliant light, and enormous skies of the Prairies are entirely absent from the story. And, of course, the only woman on this admittedly very abridged list is Emily Carr.

Fast forward to Dorothy Knowles, a life-long resident of Saskatoon, with a B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan, who also studied at the Goldsmith School of Art in London, and traveled a good deal in Canada, the U.S., France, and England. Knowles has been wholly committed to the stimulus of her native landscape since 1962, when she took part in an Emma Lake workshop led by Clement Greenberg. Her fellow participants, almost all male, were abstract artists—including her husband, William Perehudoff—but Knowles painted vigorous, uninhibited, often large perceptual landscapes as bold and ambitious as any of her colleagues’ abstractions (and as direct as the Group of Seven’s studies). Greenberg, famously a champion of abstraction, was impressed by her efforts and encouraged her to follow her instincts. (He often said that if he’d “had his druthers,” the best painting of his time would have been representational, so these free, recognizable images may have had special resonance for him.) Something similar was happening among New York artists of Knowles’s generation. In the late 1950s, when abstraction was deemed essential for serious artists, young painters such as Alex Katz and Lois Dodd, who had first worked abstractly, began to work from observations of nature, studying the landscape of Maine while they summered there.

For the past six decades, Knowles has explored the particulars of her surroundings.

While she has sometimes traveled elsewhere to paint landscapes, her most frequent starting points are the dramatic river valley below her studio near Saskatoon, the region near the family cottage on Emma Lake and the broad expanses of Saskatchewan farmland dotted with reflective sloughs, under cloud-filled skies.

Knowles is preternaturally sensitive to nuances of the seasons, time of day and weather, adapting both her palette and her touch to changing qualities of light and temperature. Yet specific as they are, her intimate watercolours and audacious canvases are never literal. They powerfully suggest the complexity and multiplicity of the natural world, but while we may be captured initially by their nominal subject,

Lesser Slave Lake Variations (AC-003-92) acrylic on canvas, 1992 53 x 78 in, 134.6 x 198.1 cm

what ultimately compels and rewards our attention is the painting as painting. We are engaged by the picture’s rhythms, the big divisions of the composition, the scale of the brush-strokes and the evocative but often unexpected shifts of color.

Knowles has never had a single way of making a painting. She can lay on thick paint with generous swipes or fragment a scene into delicate touches that ultimately derive from Paul Cézanne’s modulated patches of transparent color. Whether working on canvas or on paper, she transubstantiates her medium into a potent metaphor for experience, remaining faithful to her acute perceptions of place while following the demands of the painting with as much awareness and determination as the most cerebral abstract painter. In claiming the prairies as a stimulus for ambitious art, she has altered the story of Canadian landscape painting and, as an uncompromising painter and as a woman, she has been an influential force on a generation of younger artists. If Dorothy Knowles were Japanese, she would be certified as a Living National Treasure.

Karen Wilkin New York, July 2022

Road to Nowhere (OC-018-88) oil on canvas, 1988 30 x 70 in, 76.2 x 177.8 cm

Brown and Pale (AC-035-90) acrylic on canvas, 1990 17 1/4 x 36 in, 43.8 x 91.4 cm

Crocus (AC-019-86) acrylic on canvas, 1986 48 x 72 in, 121.9 x 182.9 cm

Wind on the River (OC-012-65) oil on canvas, 1965 56 3/8 x 56 1/2 in, 143.2 x 143.5 cm

Grove of Trees (OC-001-72) oil on canvas, 1972 19 3/4 x 21 1/4 in, 50.2 x 54 cm

Road into a Field (AP-030-92) acrylic on paper, 1992 22 x 30 in, 55.9 x 76.2 cm

Clouds and Saskatchewan Prairie (WC-014-20) watercolour on paper, 2020 11 1/4 x 15 in, 28.6 x 38.1 cm

Across the Prairie #2 (WC-047-19) watercolour on paper, 2019 11 x 15 in, 27.9 x 38.1 cm

Reeds (WC-019-21) watercolour on paper, 2021 7 1/2 x 11 in, 19.1 x 27.9 cm

Across the Lake (WC-003-19) watercolour on paper, 2019 7 1/2 x 11 in, 19.1 x 27.9 cm

Windy Day (AB-003-17) acrylic on board, 2017 8 x 10 in, 20.3 x 25.4 cm

Emma Lake, A Clear Day (AB-001-17) acrylic on board, 2017 10 x 8 in, 25.4 x 20.3 cm

Bright Blue (WC-018-14) watercolour on paper, 2014 5 1/2 x 7 1/5 in, 14 x 18.3 cm

Grey Skies (WC-057-14) watercolour on paper, 2014 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in, 14 x 19.1 cm

Early Spring (WC-033-14) watercolour on paper, 2014 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in, 14 x 19.1 cm

A Slough in Fall (WC-021-14) watercolour on paper, 2014 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in, 14 x 19.1 cm

Red Shrubs (WC-015-14) watercolour on paper, 2014 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in, 14 x 19.1 cm

Late November (WC-026-18) watercolour on paper, 2018 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in, 14 x 19.1 cm

Morning at the Lily Pads (WC-065-92) watercolour on paper, 1992 22 x 30 in, 55.9 x 76.2 cm

Edge of the Day (WC-004-22) watercolour on paper, 2022 11 x 15 in, 27.9 x 38.1 cm

Untamed Field (WC-017-74) watercolour on paper, 1974 22 x 30 in, 55.9 x 76.2 cm

First Turn-Off for the Yorkton Road (WC-081-86) watercolour on paper, 1986 22 x 30 in, 55.9 x 76.2 cm

A Tall Tree (WC-088-89) watercolour on paper, 1989 22 x 30 in, 55.9 x 76.2 cm

Lush Spring Colours (WC-075-89) watercolour on paper, 1989 22 x 30 in, 55.9 x 76.2 cm

Road to Emma Lake, Two Trees #2 (WC-006-21) watercolour on paper, 2021 7 1/2 x 11 in, 19.1 x 27.9 cm

H e f f e l Ga l l e ry To r o n to 13 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto Ontario, Canada M5R 2E1 Tel 416-961-6505, Fax 416-961-4245 Toll Free 1-888-818-6505 www.heffel.com Follow us @HeffelAuction:

LIX copyright

All images copyright Dorothy Knowles.

Essay copyright Karen Wilkin.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written consent

isbn: 978-1-927031-54-4

bac k cov e r /co uv e rture arrière

Dark Reeds (AC-001-09) Printed in Canada

acrylic on canvas, 2009 48 1/4 x 60 1/4 in, 122.6 x 153 cm

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