KIM DORLAND - Statement

I love visual culture, especially painting. I use a mess of different approaches and mediums that come together in a really disparate way - the deadness of acrylic, the sheen of spray paint, the density of oil paint. I've been asked many times why I use such thick paint and my pat answer is that I want the viewer to recognize they're looking at a painting. But it's also a Canadian thing. We love thick paint. Lots of paint piled up on little wood panels depicting heroic landscapes cover our national museum walls. I wanted to find a way to use this regional dialect in my work because it's problematic and beautiful at the same time.

In many of my paintings this landscape is the backdrop for social gatherings: bush parties, or fistfights or lone figures walking in the woods. Other times, the landscape is disrupted by the ghost of an event - beer bottles strewn about, magazines littering the forest floor - or by suburbia.  

When I know a space intimately I can convey some kind of truth about it. The scene seems more natural, realistic, and psychologically charged. I'm trying not to be seduced by beauty, but I'm working equally hard no to obfuscate it either. It's taken me a while to realize that beauty isn't such a bad thing. But neither is ugly or awkward. There's room for everything and I want to include it all.