Sea Change – Agneta Dolman

A sea change – the etymology goes back to Shakespeare, The Tempest — is an English idiomatic expression that denotes a substantial change in perspective, especially one that affects a group at large, on a particular issue. It is similar in usage and meaning to a paradigm shift or as a change to a society or community’s zeitgeist. The phrase evolved from an older and more literal usage when the term referred to an actual “change wrought by the sea.”

There are three or four things that put me in a deep meditative or reflective state. Staring at open water, staring at the Milky Way. Or a wide-open landscape with both land and sky, as in the Cole Porter classic:

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don’t fence me in

Water. Sky. Earth… and, right, the band Earth Wind and Fire got close to the mark: Fire. I had a cat, Premier Bob (yes, he was orange like the NDP party’s colour when Bob Rae swept to power in September 1990, a stray that we adopted on that very day.) Premier Bob loved to stare at the flames, the fireplace glow in the kitchen wood stove. Also, water at the Thames River. He loved to watch the critters in the fields, he loved the sky too, I believe. We were best buddies that way for the 17 years he graced my life.

I mention this only because for the second time in the past year a little known local artist, Agneta Dolman — Swedish born but resident of London — has a show and sale of her estate pieces – a retrospective– after her passing. Last year it was Halina Robinson, also curated by Moira McKee of EXCAVO. Last summer, Dolman approached McKee in advance — Dolman knew she was not long for this world and prepared in advance, wanting her remaining works to be put up for sale with proceeds to be donated to TAP Centre for Creativity to support future local artists living and working in London. Sea Change – A Retrospective Exhibition Commemorating The Artistic Legacy of Agneta Dolman runs from July 23 to Aug 3, 2024 at TAP Centre for Creativity.

These works give testament to the artist’s contemplations of the Four Elements from Classical Greek philosophy, particularly the seas near her native country . McKee says of these pieces, “throughout her practice as a painter, Agneta developed a metaphysical aesthetic, language, creating a visionary world explored through her imagination. A renderer of transitions, Agneta’s recollections of the past converge with process to shape real and imagined landscapes, tethering a primal connection with nature to our collective vulnerabilities.”

I think we all know what McKee is saying here, except me. Let me try to parse her art speak.

Agneta Dolman was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She made her way to Canada to study under the Group of Seven’s Arthur Lismer in Montreal where she would meet her future husband… artist Doug Dolman. The pair would go on to spend their last 23 summers painting and drawing immersed in the culture and beautiful landscape at their summer home on the island of Gotland, Sweden. 

They made their way to London, and though their careers were both influenced by their formal art training, Agneta would return to her roots through memory and identity, blending imagery and mythology from her native country. One thematic series in Sea Change is a vision of the Noah’s ark myth. It’s not found in Scandinavian mythology, but Vikings did sail to find new accommodating land, as did Noah. Looking for a sea change.

For example, Land in Sight offers a spectacular sweep of both sea and sky, with the promise of land to come. The palette and wood ply panel are a possible influence from London’s famous innovator of the plywood canvas Patterson Ewen.

In an interview Dolman mentions the influence of a show at the AGO in the mid 80s titled The Mystic North, that brought clarity to her own practice as a citizen and steward of the northern landscape and sea, both in Sweden and Canada. The show was a survey of Scandinavian, Nordic and Canadian landscape artists of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. The poster for that show hangs by my fireplace along with a portrait of Thomson, and one can see influences here too in some of Dolman’s painting.

Most of the paintings in her posthumous show were included in previous shows spanning twenty-five years.  In her artist statement at the time for Across the Sea at Michael Gibson Gallery from 2000, Dolman says:

This work is my response to the current change in every aspect of our lives.
Confronted with the vastness of the cosmos, uncertainties, and constant change in
our personal lives, we cringe and seek answers in various rituals of escape. Psychic
healers and new age gurus are having a field day.

Meanwhile, scientific theorists and creationist Christians have equally failed to
incorporate our need of the sacred into their belief systems. In addition, our systems
of technology and production are spinning out of control.

The above events have inspired me to create this body of work called ACROSS THE
SEA. Ideas and associated thoughts link each wood panel to the theme of transition.
As symbols of my quest, I have used the humorous and simplistic, but profound,
metaphor of Noah, the words and poetry of Genesis and childhood memories of
vessels, seagulls, and shells. Other sources of inspiration are the philosophy of Kant,
the starlit skies and deep waters of seas and lakes, my faith, my doubts and my fears.

The joy and respect I derive from nature has set me in a new direction as I ponder
the outcome of wars, global pollution, and the destruction of natural habitats. The
building of “a New Ark” through genetic research presents both great hope and
fearful speculations.

Although the content of a theme is important, the process of applying marks to a
surface is equally so as I attempt to keep a meaningful balance. The choice of
rough, and sometimes very raw, mechanically scarred plywood as support is
deliberate in order to emphasize and more closely explore the intrinsic
qualities of the subject and associated ideas. The grain and the knotholes of the
wood carry meaning, energy and expression as valid and essential to my art-making
as the happy accidental splotches and more deliberate marks.

None of this is surprising to see in Sea Change, says Toronto artist Laszlo Szabo.  “Anybody who grows up by the sea, by water is guided if not obsessed in one way or another, be it sport, recreation, lifestyle, way of life, or, art.”

What Dolman adds into that obsessive equation is a deep elegiac meditation if not yearning for transformation. She calls on the promise and potential in the human project, condition, and spirit.

On Beck’s Sea Change album from 20 years ago (acclaimed as one of the greatest break up albums), he sings that he is like “another ship in a bottle” who has no place to sail. A colleague detects a similar state in Dolman’s Sea Change though one not born of domestic troubles: “there is tangible thought in her work of an artist at a stage in her life where she’s contemplating a spiritual quest, the end of her life.”  Which brings to mind a thematic connection to London’s favourite sculptor Ed Zelenak’s series of vessels, in his late career quest for meaning in a world starting to slant askew. Or, Walter Redinger’s curious and obscure Ghost Ship sculpture from ten years back.

Which is an interesting synchronicity in the Forest City at the time, two different bodies of work but approaching the same subject and theme in different media.

Lockdown is one of the more intriguing paintings for me personally, although we all can relate to COVID lockdown days. Some more than others, like my lifelong neighbour Roland, who became a little more unhinged than usual three years ago. Roland’s response to the loss of his social world was to build a ship to sail away to a better place and time. A ship he began to construct in the middle of the road in front of his house. Artists like Dolman and Roland alike respond to the stressors of contemporary times and circumstances. Sometimes sailing away is the best option, best hope. Looking not dissimilar to Dolman’s stylized half-finished boat, Roland’s ship was equally symbolic of metamorphosis, a transfiguration. Roland tragically took the “fast lane” off the planet a few months after the City of London official told him he was not leaving until he removed his “ship” from the city’s road. At his memorial service a few months later, I delivered the eulogy intimating his desire to sail to new adventures was like Odysseus, on to greener pastures and a renewed, transformed state of existence and consciousness. Just like Noah. From the peanut gallery at the wake, someone chirped that Rollie “has sailed to Valhalla.”

Yacht rock meister Christopher Cross had alluded to the healing effects of sailing away 45 years ago, a tune life-long friend was well aware of.

Sailing
Takes me away to where I always heard it could be
Just a dream and the wind to carry me
Soon I will be free

All of this comes off as synchronicity. Or, synchronized sailing? Including a friend who may or may not be in an end-of-life situation who just happened to buy a sailboat parked in Southampton harbour.

If nothing else, this show of work from Dolman’s repertoire that nobody knows too much about reminds me that I need to head up to Southampton on Lake Huron as I did a decade back and contemplate how Premier Bob is a descendent of Noah’s preservation of a male and female cat, along with two of every animal and plant… and catch the setting sun over the Lake Huron horizon in the way Bruce Cockburn sings about in the first line of How I Spent My Fall Vacation.

 “Sun went down, looking like the eye of God…”

Vincent Cherniak sails, metaphorically through song (unless you count rides on B.C. Ferries) in London, Ontario

Sea Change, Agneta Dolman at The Arts Project July 23 – August 3, 2024.

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 25th, 6pm – 8 pm.