Darlene Cole | Kissing Trees
Darlene Cole | Kissing Trees
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto
December 2 -16, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 2, 2:00 - 4:00pm
Kissing Trees—the latest chapter of paintings by Darlene Cole—is an expression of what the artist calls her “craving for the wildly private”—the curious sense of intimacy and longing unique to the experience of being alone in nature, consuming it, being consumed by it, becoming it. Cole’s painted world is a spectrum of sensation: an endlessly expanding forest, a blooming rose, an open window, a fold of fabric, and a ripple in the water. More than visitors to the scene, Cole’s figures descend deeply into their worlds, their painted forms becoming almost indistinguishable from their environments. These women are obscured but not overtaken: each performs, with equal part curiosity and confidence, an act of total immersion. The state of being outside is, for Cole, a turn inward: “It is the interconnectedness...perhaps almost a union...of the tangled-ness of fragility and strength that I am drawn to as I pain the flesh of the body alongside the flesh of nature.”
Cole's work has been exhibited across North America and is collected internationally in collections in Switzerland, France, Russia, the U.K., Italy and the U.S. Notable public collections include: Fairmont Hotels (Toronto, Montreal), Manulife Financial, RBC, CIBC, OCAD University, and the K.F. Preueter Collection of Canadian Art (Etobicoke).
Join us at the opening reception Saturday, December 2nd from 2-4pm at Bau-Xi Toronto to meet the artist and view the exhibition.