$10,000

Oh, Canada. Dorland’s forest paintings could easily be pulled into conversation with Margaret Atwood’s early theoretical writing[i]. In Canadian prose and poetry, she wrote, nature is a monster that exists both inside and outside the self. Canadian identity then, is based on surviving a dual wilderness. But this theme is alive in Canadian art, too. The Group of Seven’s landscapes are bleakly beautiful, more austere than grand, vaguely if not overtly threatening. Dorland’s painting of Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, an artist residency where he once taught workshops, contains much of what Atwood was talking about. It’s made with so many oblique lines, a touch of hostility, an agitation in the brushwork. The trees are closing in. There’s the sound of twigs breaking. The monster cometh.

[i] Margaret Atwood published Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature in 1972.