Juxtapoz Magazine – Kim Dorland Asks “Where are all the protest songs?”

It’s the stop of September 2022 and I’m standing with Kim Dorland in his studio. It is precisely what you would count on Kim Dorland’s studio to seem like. Tons of paint, artwork almost everywhere. It smells superior in listed here. On the central wall hangs the substantial centerpiece of this exhibition, Where by are all the protest music? The painting answers this concern. They are all in this article, all of individuals music – in this do the job. It is the longest track on the album, it is Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, apart from it is way darker. Each gesture, image, vignette, crevice, explosion on the four canvases answers this question.

What is a landscape artist left to paint when we’ve burned, bulldozed, plowed, flooded or paved more than all the landscapes? This painting may possibly be the response to that question also. A single could connect with this get the job done apocalyptic, it is undeniably macabre in places and some of the imagery terrifying, but that would ignore one more strength that operates by the do the job. The strength of an artist grappling with what the future holds, for him, his family members, his world. 

When I see the painting, it is not finished. There are items of tape in areas where by Dorland has scrawled, ‘fix’, ‘bridge’ or other notes to himself. Surveying the area, there are numerous smaller sized functions on walls, in containers, or leaning alongside one another waiting around to get shipped out. Various important themes arise in this entire body of work, the most urgent is that the artist’s earth is burning up, almost everything is on hearth. Blackened trees are engulfed in vivid flames, skeletons clasp arms in an attempt to escape the inferno. Nonetheless, Dorland usually takes us by shock, because it’s not all darkish. There are portraits of Lori, the intensive impasto that contains her deal with, is, to Dorland, her actual face, layered, advanced and stunning. There are nocturnes with lush landscapes less than skeleton moons and verdant trees with levels so dense and so inexperienced you want to access out and contact them. 

Dorland and I know each and every other due to the fact we aid a selection of charitable companies with our perform and our time, exclusively environmental leads to like water. Numerous times, each and every 12 months I’m standing prior to a area total of folks having bids on a painting he has donated. This artist cares deeply about his local community and his planet. 

So, I’m still left in dilemma: If it is all above and we are destined to melt away up in the hell we’ve created, why be in any way hopeful? Why hassle with this grand gesture or even these little loving tableaus? Perhaps all you can do is write a protest song, maybe it is the most essential issue you will at any time do. —Stephen Ranger 

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