by the water celebrates the remarkable and enduring career of artist Dorothy Knowles. Achieved during a period of artistic production spanning 70 years, Knowles’ prolific oeuvre marks a significant contribution to the history of painting in this province and beyond. The exhibition foregrounds her stylistic range through a comprehensive selection of paintings depicting Saskatchewan landscapes near various bodies of water: lakes, rivers, streams, and ponds. The works highlight Knowles’ ability to capture the essence of the prairies throughout the changing seasons, and evoke her intuitive understanding of the interrelatedness between art-making and the natural world.

Over the course of her extensive career, Knowles’ various subject matter and painting processes remained connected through her continual immersion in the elements and scenes of the natural world. Whether painting within the landscape en plein air, or in the studio from sketches and photographs originating outdoors, she captured nature’s transformational qualities through the dynamics of shifting skies, transitional light, and subtle reflections on the water’s surface. Stylistically, Knowles achieved these moments through the interplay between deliberate and loose brushwork, and at times with visible traces of charcoal underdrawings exposed through the painting’s surface, revealing evidence of her process.  

by the water presents examples from five different decades of Knowles’ painting practice, revealing an intimate connection to place, that permeated both her life and work.