No Straight Lines With her characteristic modesty, Golda King hesitates in calling herself an “artist”. Instead, she opts for the titles of “painter” or a “maker of art”. She understands the weight of the word: that being an artist requires both the prowess to conceptualize a message and the talent to translate this into visual format. However, any doubt she previously harbored is dispelled in her fifth solo show at Qube Gallery, “No Straight Lines”.
In 2017, King debuted her first solo show, also in Qube Gallery, called “Enroute” - a series of works united by her desire “to figure out where [she] belong[s]”. The images she painted then were drawn from her journeys, both figurative and landscape, in a mixture of neo impressionism and abstract expressionism. Her medium and technique allowed her to be intuitive and impulsive. Through these earlier works, she became known for the use of pointillism that has become synonymous with this period of her work. Since then, King has experienced a series of growths - from her exploration of various different subject matters and themes, experimentation of techniques, and continuous education through art residencies overseas.
For this current exhibit, her growth is clear. Gone is the obvious ode to pointillism. For “No Straight Lines”, she presents twenty strong works, wherein she painstakingly applies a circle grid as the final layer instead of “points” dotting her canvasses. Like her personal growth, these “points” have expanded with her - now becoming a grid-like circle overlay. In some of her works, she coats the entire canvas with this grid, in other works, she selects portions to highlight.
Her subjects? Landscapes. Some imaginary, and some inspired by real places she has journeyed to. Whereas her first show in 2017 posed the question “where do I belong?”, this series of landscapes - her safe, happy places - is her answer. Created in the time of COVID-19 restrictions and the aftermath of Typhoon Odette, King maintained an almost monastic experience and found meditation as part of her solace, of making sense of the world. She purposely shielded away from social media for the months she was working on the series. “I wanted to keep my blinders on,” she says, “and didn’t want to be influenced by the burgeoning art scene on social media and the news.”
“No Straight Lines” is a show of the constant navigation through a world increasingly complicated, no more black and whites and neutrals, full of circuitous connections and interwoven threads. The viewers are invited themselves to find their own safe places, their refuges. These places may not exist in the physical world and instead be a construct of one’s mind.
The results of her self-exploration are profound. In this cohesive series of works, we see only GOLDA. A different palette, still impulsive and intuitive, but now with more confidence in posing a question and answering it through her art. No one will mistake Golda as, in her words, “just a painter or a maker of art”. The title of being an artist is definitely for her to claim: Golda King, Artist.