Propeller Member Since 2020
Doris Purchase is a Toronto-based mixed media artist who has degrees from Ontario College of Art and the University of Guelph. Doris’s work is predominantly conceptual and draws on the materiality behind a painting. Through her practice, she focuses on artists’ materials to invoke conversations about western ideals and question our value system. Part sculpture, part painting, these pieces are inversions. They are about unearthing what’s obscured to bring the raw materials of a painting to the fore.
Since 2012 I have spoken of my work as a look into what is behind the materials we artists use and the artist supplies that we take for granted.
My art comes in a few forms. I have personally unmade myself as a painter (a second career artist as conceptual artist – my first career as an artist, a realist painter). While I no longer use paints as a final layer with the intention to break from Western ideals of representation my intention is to present a new understanding of the same materials and present their value as symbolic of people and born of the earth. I create an artwork by simply presenting the materials such as the wire, frame and canvas, such that, I do not want them to be used as they are traditionally thought of (supporting pieces for the art) but rather I use them to remind us that these components are the things we tend to ignore – they are not part of the “making” because they are out of sight, not important or subordinate. I present them as something that needs to be seriously considered and I often unmake them, break them and pull them apart so that we notice them. I primarily use found objects – I find old discarded frames, stretchers and wires thrown away, at thrift stores or intended to be thrown away and use these in my pieces.
Beyond the Frame – Episode #25 Doris Purchase
