| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | A native of Saskatchewan who has lived and taught in Calgary for many years as a Sessional instructor in print media at the Alberta College of Art + Design, Gorenko is primarily a painter who usually works on wood panel. As acrylic paintings, they are small in scale, sometimes no more than twenty inches in dimension. Their representational imagery is plainly stated without detail or embellishment. Stylized and simplified, they are scenes from our modern world especially the prairies − the road that stretches into infinity, a farmhouse with a satellite dish, the smoke from a blown oil well, a camper trailer with a few clouds above, a bulldozer on the horizon and so on.
Expressed with such simplicity and economy of means, Gorenko’s works might easily be confused with folk art if it were not for their underlying humour, sense of the absurd and social commentary. Their content relates to contemporary society, our relationship to nature and other aspects of life. Other features of his art include careful attention to the framing of the artwork and the appearance, on occasion, of an animal or a human figure in the foreground. The artist has also produced suites of etchings and more recently has moved toward more suites and groupings of work.
Gorenko’s post-secondary education includes a BFA (University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, 1979), and MA (University of Dallas, Irving, TX, 1980) and an MFA (University of Calgary, 1982). He has maintained a healthy record of being collected and exhibited in Canada with over two dozen solo exhibitions and participation in group exhibitions since 1981. Publications about his art include Richard Gorenko: Pure and Simple (University of Waterloo Art Gallery, 1993) and Richard Gorenko: Irresistible Tautology (Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 1995). |