Toronto-based painter Mara Korkola is nationally recognized for her captivating works that compress worlds of information into compact frames. Often paired into diptych and triptych combinations, these series present slightly different views of the same location. While many of Korkola’s paintings capture anonymous city streets at night, her subject matter has also included airports and landscapes. Like keyholes, her paintings demand our attention and focus and transport us into another time and space.
Mara Korkola was born in Marathon, Ontario in 1965. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto (AOCA); Wichita State University, Kansas (BFA) and the University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio (MFA). She has exhibited in Canada, the United States and Germany, including Painting as Paradox at Artists Space in New York, Synthetic Psychosis at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Sequence and Passage at Cambridge Galleries, Ontario, Auto-Motive: World from the Windshield at Oakville Galleries, Ontario, and Commuter, a comprehensive solo exhibition of her No Place series of paintings at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario.