Influenced early on by her experiences at the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops, Dorothy Knowles applied her painterly skills to capturing the grand landscapes of her home province. With “plein-air” painting being a key element of her art practice, Knowles created drawings, photographs and even large, fully finished paintings working outdoors. In “Wheat Fields”, the artist has made expert use of the characteristics of oil paint, varying the surface from thin washes to the thick impasto treatment of the clouds. The low horizon emphasizes the great expanse of prairie sky, while the palette aptly captures a crisp and clear Saskatchewan day. Roald Nasgaard observed, “...above all it is the parklands of northern Saskatchewan, their rolling plains and the rivers and valleys cutting into them that she has studied with loving attentiveness. This is her Algonquin Park and her north of Lake Superior. It is a farmed and man-shaped land, and yet too vast to walk, its horizons lying only at the distance encompassed by the imagination.”
