Curated by Anne Patsch
Tori Drost’s paintings are rooted in her firsthand impressions of the natural world: glimpses of yellow light reflected on the black water of a lake at night, or blocks of ice floating onto a road as a river breaches its banks. Her process is memory-driven; she works without the use of photographic references. She builds up, removes, and reapplies paint to create works with a history of color, scratches, scrapes, and strokes. Drost’s intricately layered almost-images evoke the convergence of human activity, land, and water.
Drost’s work emphasizes the indelible mark of human activity on the earth’s ecosystem. She draws attention to our gradual normalization of environmental conditions that would once have seemed shocking. The paintings in Unfolding Landscapes speak to how we experience the environment versus what we simply see.
Tori Drost was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in Art and Art History from the University of Guelph in Canada, and a Master of Fine Art degree from The Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She has exhibited her work in Canada, Glasgow, London, and Berlin.