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Born and raised in Toronto, where
she completed her post-secondary education at Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute majoring in psychology, Doris has been on the art scene since
she was conceived - her mother, Barbara Allison, was an accomplished
artist of her own right. Always interested in the visual arts she began
to cultivate her talent at eighteen and her passion for painting hasn’t
waned ever since.
Steeped in the Canadian tradition, the subject matter of her artwork
has been landscapes and flowers. But it is in the latter that she has
dedicated most of her artistic life and freedom of expression. Her floral
work is well balanced and spontaneous, but with an eye for effect rather
than composition. The result is an effusion of texture in which the
figurative is drawn into the receding abstract background.
Doris’ personality and
femininity is a mark of her gender that has found freedom of expression
into the floral world. However, in the history of fine arts, all male
artists have tried their hand at floral compositions – the French
artist Henri Fantin-Latour, a friend and supporter of Manet, was very
much admired as a flower painter. But few have achieved the sublimity
of female artists, of who Georgia O’Keefe is the best example
in our century. Doris’ work has an inkling of the profundity of
the great American artist and a zest for the contemporary. Her floral
paintings are, as Alfred Stieglitz remarked about O’Keefe’s
work, "the purest, finest, sincerest things that I have seen in
a long time."
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