Darlene Cole

At the age of 36, Darlene Cole has become one of the most sought after young artists in Canada. After graduating from Queen's University, she completed a Masters of Fine Arts at the Unversity of Waterloo. Since then, her paintings have appeared in numerous exhibitions throughout Canada and the United States, as well as in corporate and private collections around the world.

At first blush, Cole's ingenious oil technique could be mistaken for watercolour. Her soft dreamscapes could be blithe reflections on childhood, or celebrations of an era lost to time. But a closer look reveals something more forceful behind the sunny scenes. The narrative tension in her work is palpable. The ravages of adulthood are always uncomfortably close at hand. Cole has cast on us a masterfull spell of suspended childhood, heightening the urgency of our memories with a reminder, if not a warning, that the past, though easily evoked, can never be re-claimed.

Darlene Cole lives and works in Brooklin, Ontario.(GdB)