Donna Kriekle Commentary

The Drawers - Donna Kriekle Commentary written by Julie Oakes

exhibitions in the drawers in the gallery commentaries artists catalogs contact

Donna Kriekles work touches us with a light. It has a freshness and a playful quality, that embodies an appreciation of the joy of living. Her work sparkles. It is appropriate that her mediums embody light.

Donna is a master watercolorist. World View is an example. She has managed to bring a gradated, saturated color field around the opening box without a blur or watermark. The Gift floats on clear white paper and is as pure as air, while the world is deep, molded, detailed and corporeal. Donna’s oil paintings also present this sense of light and air as she records and invents skies that are as full of breath as the prairie skies above her poetic head. Her works in glass are etched with layers of words and images - reflecting and refracting depth, focus and meaning.

When painting the cycles of nature and time - the amaryllis buds, blooms and wilts, the grasshoppers eat the wheat although the wheat has already become bread, the apple grows upon the circular branch and drops to the earth before our eyes - not only the life, but the death itself, is generous of spirit. The mauves on the dying petals are provocative, the grasshoppers (killing the wheat to feed their brittle bodies) are fascinating in their mechanical structure, the earth itself, fragile eco systems suspended in space, is framed within the concept of giving and generosity. The earth is a gift.

From strong and nourishing to feminine and frivolous to sublime and seductive to effervescent, Donnas work engenders integrity and inspires respect.