Trees dancing in the dead of night (Island Island); the solitary blue of an old community building (Abandoned Store); the hazy buzz of life somewhere in the early morning (Screen Door Slam)—Dorry Spikes’s paintings transport their audience to another world, one where questions of place and presence transcend beyond the literally physical into the figuratively sensational. Bright strokes and careful shadows abound in her work, which might ask us to breathe in the night air amidst gently swaying wildflowers on a starlit path (Mountain Road) or to perceive a lonely freighter from a rickety boardwalk on a cloudy day (Freighter). In either case, Spikes’ work makes it clear that we are going somewhere and experiencing something. Such is the case in pieces like Joy Riders and Kololo Airstrip, where the interplay between light and shadow evokes a spectrality to the motorcycles’ movement; there’s an (in)tangible wonder of where the riders—where we—are going, but there’s also the overwhelming feeling that it doesn’t really matter. 

Sensations of presence in a dreamlike world are precisely what Dorry Spikes aims toward in her work, as she seeks to capture the disquieting vulnerability that exists when experiencing the unknown. She builds on the pictorial innovations of Cezanne to give us images where trees, leaves, and the light that flickers through them all come to life via the careful layering of colors. The vegetal and the human intermingle, with human figures grounded in the landscape (as all humans, in fact, are). Her layered brushstrokes build into scenes animated by the spirit of hiraeth, the Welsh term for a deep longing for home, and especially the natural surroundings that mark it.

- The Editors

When I take the time to draw a place, I become deeply immersed and connected - every sense is heightened and I feel closely held by the place that holds my attention. I am drawn to depicting the vulnerability of humans in nature - call and response, expanse, hot dust, dancing trees.

I am interested in how the notion of hiraeth influences my recollection of the places. I make memory drawings and paintings that try to recapture the sensory immediacy of my outlook as an itinerant in unfamiliar surroundings. The 'othering' potential implicit in the outsiders' gaze makes me uncomfortable. My drawings wrestle with an inability to turn away, they are songs of devotion and non-belonging.