ArtWORK > Mini-retrospective

Installation view of the series SPRING MONUMENTS from the mini-retrospective:
Doreen Wittenbols
Performative Painting: LOOK PAINT REPEAT + International Passport Paintings
June 1 - September 2, 2024
Gallery 235
Harbourfront centre, Toronto, CANADA

Spring Monuments

Early in my career, in Canada, I painted life-size, performative self-portraits on giant canvases. I tried to continue that work later in the Netherlands, but something about the scale made the paintings feel like crucifixes. Working from a small reference photo and then blowing it up so big, I felt like my hand wasn’t in the work anymore.

When I started making smaller paintings and then combining them, the installations became works of their own. By using grids, clusters, or assemblages, I could push the scale and sense of immersion without sacrificing the intimacy of a smaller composition.

Years after I began working smaller, I was living in New Mexico and initiated a series of landscapes entitled Water Soluble Souvenirs (2019-2021). These plein-air paintings on paper referenced the medium I had chosen and the fleeting moment of a changing landscape threatened by global warming. They also represented a partial departure from working with photo references, and towards single-session works painted from life.

Later, during the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, I started to “plant” paintings in my garden in New Mexico and paint them in situ. This resulted in an ongoing series of painted translations, starting with depictions of my book art from the series Paintings for Our Mothers (2021), on view nearby. Fittingly, that series references flower arranging.

I see these “paintings of paintings” as a type of memento mori or vanitas, a painting tradition that often depicts flowers as a symbol of life’s fleeting qualities—its incredible beauty and inevitable end. In this installation, works from the Spring Monuments (2020-2021) series are back in a garden of sorts, displayed on stands that reference the garden stake, angled towards the (Santa Fe) sun and sky.

-Doreen Wittenbols

The artist gratefully acknowledges support from The Canada Council for the Arts.

Photo: LF Documentation