$12,000

Many of Kim Dorland’s paintings, Night among them, work at the level of awe. They are so evocative but hard to pin down, as they tend to change tone or meaning depending on the proportion of belief or unbelief we feel in the moment. Sometimes, in the night, everything feels tinged with terror and we understand that life has no meaning. Other times, night’s undulating blacks generate their own strange shine, and we understand that darkness is the original substance, the original mesh out of which everything possible was born. Is the figure facing away from or towards us? Are we looking at the back of Lori’s head as she encounters this mystery, or at ghoulish contours barely discernable under a wall of hair?