$15,000

Dorland paints the immaterial – ‘the feeling’ of his wife Lori, intimations of psychological darkness, or the kind of radiant light that grows around certain trees, convincing us they are speaking for God. But somehow, he’s able to paint the immaterial with so much material. Where some artists might use a slight or minimal touch, Dorland piles on maximal mud, flesh, pulp, soot and char, splashing these with the brightest acids. He’s used so much paint, at times, he’s had to screw it in place. This is alchemy. Not base metals into gold but paint into substance and substance into feeling. These two birds are two alchemical extremes. This crow, made of oil, acrylic and screws, is a harbinger of doom. Against a wash of orange he perches, like Edgar Allen Poe’s raven, croaking a single ominous word: “Nevermore.[i]” But in 2011, Dorland made a suite of paintings about the physicality and structure of light. They feel relentlessly life-affirming. This owl, blasted with a copious outpouring, is subsumed by an infinite yes!

[i] The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, 1845.