Golda King’s recent exhibit at Qube Gallery is the subject of this issue’s art piece by Maris Holopainen.

WITH HER CHARACTERISTIC modesty, Golda King hesitates in calling herself an artist. Instead, she prefers painter or a maker of art. She understands the weight of the word: that being an artist requires both the discipline 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. 

King debuted her first solo show at Qube Gallery five years ago, titled Enroute, a collection that is her personal journey to figure out where she belongs. The images she painted were drawn from her experiences, both figurative and illustrative, 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. No Straight Lines comprises 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, 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 passed through. Whereas her first show in 2017 posed the question where do I belong, this series of landscapes — her safe, happy places, is her answer. Made during the period between the pandemic lockdown and the aftermath of typhoon Odette, when she maintained an almost monastic experience with meditation as part of her solace; created an opportunity for her to make sense of the world. She purposely shielded 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 black and whites and neutrals, full of circuitous connections and interwoven threads.

The viewers are invited 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 hers to claim: Golda King, Artist.