By Mike Landry
Jenal Dolson's 6'x6' acrylic and latex "Polyp Tart".
Engulfed in work and surrounded by the mountains in Vermont last fall, Toronto-based painter Jenal Dolson was in a “Utopian bubble.” She was on a residency, and the experience continues to affect her work.
“Everything was very relaxed. It was very meditative. It really put in perspective some of my thoughts on person versus their environment,” says Dolson.
“In the paintings it’s kind of the melding of material and subject matter. Within those planes existing in the work I feel there’s this Utopian feeling or gesture that’s really coming out.”
The experience also allowed Dolson to return to her original thoughts about painting. Like her surroundings, Dolson sought again to paint in a euphoric manner not limiting herself to colour, size or material. She started mixing odd paints as well as different materials, like latex and oil causing minor cracking.
Dolson has found that this energy transfers to the viewer, creating an energy cycle she’s been exploring.
“There’s an energy about the works especially from just pure gesture and colour. There’s a definite energy, and I think that it’s this positive euphoric energy emited.”
Although very abstract looking, Dolson draws her subject matter typically from bodily forms. But rather than external shapes, she’s more interested in internal body structures. Using medical text books as reference, she increases size and context, playing with the distortion of micro versus macro images.
The effect of this distortion is to give her work a sense of the ornamental. Although it’s an odd way of describing fine art, Dolson is proud to call her work ornamental not because it’s simply decorative, rather because of the awe-inspiring nature ornamental elements can have in spaces like a baroque cathedral.
“It’s just overwhelming, and that overwhelming state is important to my work. A kind of achieving a sense of wonder or even humour (because some of the structures become very phallic or sexual, you find yourself in a state of looking and then finding yourself surprised with what you’re seeing). It’s kind of like this delicate fine-tuned thought about where and how I’ll be able to take someone through the work.”
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