Dorothy Knowles: Celebrating a Canadian Landscape Legend

This exhibition focuses on the diversity and beauty that Knowles was able to capture of the prairies of Saskatchewan and beyond. She is celebrated for her unique perspective on the land. Her works transcend time and she remained true to her calling through a time where landscape painting wasn’t “cool”. Now, we celebrate the memory of a Canadian art legend that challenged herself through painting what was so raw and true to her soul – Landscape.

One of Canada’s most respected artists, Dorothy Knowles was born in Unity, Saskatchewan in 1927 and grew up on a farm overlooking a prairie valley. Initially Knowles had no plans to become a painter, and studied biology at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

In the 1960s, Dorothy Knowles attended workshops at the Emma Lake Art Camp led by the American art critic Clement Greenberg (1962), artist Kenneth Noland (1963), Jules Olitski (1964), Lawrence Alloway (1965), and Michael Steiner (1969). All of these workshops had varying degrees of influence on her work, changing her style from a heavy impasto favoured by Greenberg to a more fluid technique preferred by Noland. Most importantly, she discovered the joy of working directly from nature. Thus, weather permitted, she worked out of doors, at times producing finished paintings, at times sketches and photographs which she used in the studio.