DANA HOLST: Sometimes Rainbows Are Black
Catalogue Launch




Sometimes Rainbows Are Black is a 76-page colour catalogue based on Dana Holst's work from 2007 to 2011, in three chapters titled: True Romance, Prey and Sometimes Rainbows Are Black. Designed by Howard Poon, Edmonton with photography by Rémi Thériault, Ottawa, the catalogue features essays by writer, painter and art critic Gary Michael Dault.

Works presented in this catalogue were recently exhibited together as Sometimes Rainbows Are Black at The Red Head Gallery, Toronto in November 2011 and White Water Gallery, North Bay in September 2011.

As Dault writes in his essay "In the Dark, one of Holst's most perfectly realized paintings", "acts as an almost epic summary of the ideas that tincture and animate Holst's Prey pictures. And the work bristles with Holstian ambiguities." "The question (one of the questions anyhow) seems to be about whether the girl is just overwhelmingly pleased with the bird's demise, or whether she is busy with larger concepts: a meditation about power and the transcendence it brings, perhaps (each man kills the thing he loves, intoned Oscar Wilde), or a rudimentary understanding that wisdom lies somewhere beyond the present, no matter how unsatisfactorily vivid the present turns out to be. Holst's overheated little girl is, let us remember, "in the dark." And what is "the dark" except a realm of violence and possibility?"

Dana Holst has exhibited across Canada, and notably she was selected by Wajdi Mouawad, the director of the Théâtre Français (National Arts Centre in Ottawa) as Associate Visual Artist for the 2011-2012 Season. Her work is included in private collections in Canada and the U.S. and the public collections of: Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston; Art Bank, Ottawa and Glenbow Museum, Calgary. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, Toronto, in December 2012 and La Vie Fantastique a travelling group exhibition curated by Shane Golby for Art Gallery of Alberta Trex Program.



Special Edition Catalogue - $50.
(Signed with the original lithograph Poor Butterfly, edition of 100.)

Regular Catalogue - $20.

To purchase visit www.danaholst.com, email info@danaholst.com or phone 1-780-953-3859.
Wholesale inquiries welcome.

Dana Holst gratefully acknowledges the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Images:
Sometimes Rainbows are Black (Cover of Catalogue), 2011.
In the Dark, 2009. Oil on linen on panel, 10 x 8".
Poor Butterfly, 2011. Lithograph on paper 8 x 6", edition of 100.