$15,000

Dorland’s work runs the entire gamut of human emotion. One painting might reveal heaven, another hell. “I’m not a comfortable person,” he said in a 2014 interview, “so my paintings are not comfortable.[i]” His zombie paintings, of which this is an early example, are Dorland’s uneasy analogy for the here and now. Iterations of this zombie composition appear in several paintings, and the effect of all of them depends on where we situate ourselves. Are we being pursued by these lurching walkers? Or is Dorland describing us? Maybe we are the vampiric cannibals, hollowed of spirit. Dorland’s zombies have become increasingly ragged and skeletal over the years – hungrier, clutching smartphones. They have come out of the shadows and have evolved (like variants?) into a purely deadpan critique. I almost miss these early zombies, where the threat, though constant and looming, did not yet come from inside my own person.

[i] Painting’s Giant Dialogue – An Interview with Kim Dorland. Border Crossings Magazine, 2014.