MARA KORKOLA | MAR PACIFICO

JULY 8 – AUGUST 26, 2023 (extended)

MAR PACIFICO ∼ peaceful sea

In 1519, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, in the employ of Spain, began a journey across the Atlantic Ocean to seek a western route to the Spice Islands via South America.  After braving perilous seas and navigating through what are now known as the Straits of Magellan, his small fleet entered an unfamiliar ocean in November 1520. He called this body of water pacifico, due to the calmness of the water at the time.  When Magellan and his crew entered the Pacific Ocean, they thought that the Spice Islands were close at hand. Little did they know that their destination remained thousands of miles away. The explorers had ventured into the largest ocean on Earth. (mar pacifico ∼ peaceful sea). (NOAA https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/)

ELISSA CRISTALL GALLERY is pleased to invite you to an exhibition of oil paintings by Toronto artist Mara Korkola.

This new collection of paintings reflects on Korkola’s journey through the Gulf Islands to the beaches of Tofino on the west coast of British Columbia. She writes “the more that I’ve travelled, the smaller the world seems, there being only certain ways that land meets water, or a beach feels, or waves roll in.” Thick and sticky with paint, these small-scale oil on panel and oil on aluminum landscapes are direct and tactile.  The exhibition continues to August 5, 2023.

“The landscape of our formative years establishes our sense of scale, light, colour and form, and is the landscape we compare all other landscapes to. New places we visit get added like chapters, or addendums, continually broadening the context for entering the next new place.” 

“Having spent my early years on the north shore of Lake Superior, I was well prepared for entering the coastal landscapes of BC. Looking out onto Howe Sound, or the beaches of Tofino, felt immensely familiar, and comfortable. I don’t make art out of places I don’t know, but this carrying with me of home makes places that share landforms feel like a letter of introduction, easier to be intimate with: easier to enter, and eventually, to paint.”

Interview with Mara Korkola

Mara Korkola graduated from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto (AOCA); Wichita State University, Kansas (BFA) and the University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio (MFA).  She has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Canada, the US and Germany, including Painting as Paradox at Artists Space in New York, Synthetic Psychosis at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Auto-Motive: World from the Windshield, Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Sequence and Passage: Mara Korkola and Monica Tap at Cambridge Galleries in Cambridge, Ontario, and Commuter, a comprehensive solo exhibition of her No Place series of paintings at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario.

Korkola’s work has been reviewed in Canadian Art, Border Crossings, C Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and Now Magazine among others, and has been included in Carte Blanche Vol 2 – Painting, a national survey of Canadian painters. Her work is held in private and corporate collections, including Scotia Bank, Fidelity Investments and Hydro Quebec.  www.marakorkola.com