Additional Images

Provenance:

Michael Gibson Gallery, London
Private Collection, Ontario

Literature:

Harold Klunder, Michael Gibson Gallery, London, Ontario, 2011.

James D. Campbell, “Harold Klunder,” (exhibition review), Magenta Magazine, Montreal, 2014.

John Marsonet, The Artist Life-Harold Klunder, a Program Documentary Series for Bravo Television, 2013.

Note:

Born in the Netherlands in 1943, Harold Klunder emigrated to Toronto in 1952. Based in Montreal, Klunder’s colourful impasto and abstract paintings have received critical acclaim in Canada and abroad.

Self-portraiture is characteristic of Klunder’s work. With nearly all images beginning as figurative drawings, they morph, extend, transform and distort as the painting takes shape. Sometimes spending up to ten years on any given painting, Klunder’s rigorous and personalized approach equally echoes and allows for the changing nature of personality and the unconscious mind to unfold. His paintings seem to embody a spirit of metamorphosis, with the curvilinear and highly abstract patterns suggestive of the untamed and dissonant thoughts that often occupy and threaten to overwhelm one’s daily existence. Initially influenced by the Dutch tradition of abstract expressionism, Klunder actively carved his own path away from this modernist aesthetic, creating his own individualized style rooted in his adopted Canadian identity. Working with large scale pieces allows Klunder to assert a sense of physicality, which imbues his paintings with a kind of mind-body connection, making them come alive to both artist and viewer alike.

Describing his work as “everything is significant and nothing is significant,” Klunder’s use of oil paint, given the postmodern fascination with alternate media such as digital photography, is certainly significant. His piece Of Mind and Matter, Day and Night, painted between 2005 and 2007, is demonstrative of his dedication to oil painting. Klunder takes chances not only in his choice of medium but also in revealing part of his internal self on the canvas. The rich and thickly applied red hues are offset by touches of contrasting blue, black and yellow; this diptych illustrates his differing experience of day and night. During the day, thoughts are seemingly entangled with the world around him, pictured in the jumble of lines and shapes that comprise his representation. At night, a more figurative image is presented, hinting that after dark there is more opportunity for solitary reflection and a return to the self (whatever that may be). The title Of Mind and Matter, suggests that rather than a dominance of one over the other, both entities constitute his being. Recalling that Klunder painted this over a two year period, the heavily applied layers of paint illustrate the vagaries of his experiences throughout this time.