Rukaj Gallery is pleased to present Big Sky a restrospective exhibition of paintings by Dorothy Knowles, spanning the early 60s towards her late period. The show will run from October 8th to November 5th 2026.
Dorothy Knowles occupies an important place in the history of landscape painting. Working for more than seven decades in the male-dominated post-war envronment of Canadian painting, she developed a sustained examination of the prairie and parkland regions of Western Canada, producing paintings distinguished by their close observation of light, atmosphere, and seasonal change. Although her work emerged alongside the formal concerns of post-war modernism, Knowles remained committed to direct engagement with the landscape, shaping a body of work that bridged observational painting and colour field painting.After studying at the University of Saskatchewan, Knowles continued her education at Goldsmiths School of Art in London, England, before marrying William Perehudoff in Paris in 1951.
An important turning point in her career came at the 1962 Emma Lake Artists' Workshop in northern Saskatchewan, where the critic Clement Greenberg encouraged her to remain committed to landscape painting at a time when hard-edge abstraction occupied a central place in modernist criticism. Knowles later worked alongside Kenneth Noland, whom influenced her approach towards applying paint in thin veils of shimmering hues.
Over the following decades, Knowles developed a painterly approach grounded in established compositional traditions while informed by the direct observation and fluid handling associated with plein air painting. Her work reflected a sustained engagement with the landscapes of Western Canada, where she was born and spent most of her life, exploring the formal possibilities of colour, light, and spatial relationships through close attention to the particularities of place.
