Biography: New Zealand artist Anita DeSoto lives in Waitati, Dunedin and has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for the last 20 years. She has a Master of Fine Arts and has been lecturing in Drawing and Painting at the Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic since 2004.
In recognition of her contribution to the New Zealand visual arts she was awarded an arts residency in the prestigious Leipzig International Art Program for three months in Leipzig, Germany (2010). Aratoi Fellow in 2012. Artist in residence at the New Pacific Studios in Vallejo, San Francisco 2014. Recipient of the William Hodges fellowship in Southland for 2018.
Artists Statement for Current Work:
Living in New Zealand far from the Baroque originals of Titian, Rubens and Tiepolo, I feel free to re appropriate the works of Old Masters, I hold these in admiration but despise the misogyny they represent at the same time.
I am flipping the narrative of these old stories of women in the background, as accessories, victims, pawns to be bribed and seduced, defined by patriarchal society.
In these new versions the men are obscured or removed from the original composition. The new versions become a narrative about the sisterhood being together about being seen in a woman’s story.
I am painting in oils but reject the slick realism of the past I paint with broad brushstrokes, dripping, smudging and blurring disrupting the realism and the old story. There is a push and pull between what remains of the original and the new surface of paint, sometimes - abstracted.
With every re appropriation made, I marvel at the skill of the Old Master and with every broad deleting brush stroke I feel empowered.
To be a female painter is itself a feminist act.
Please check out my up and coming exhibition" I Dont Want Your Golden Apple" Aug 28th 2022 Gallery De Novo
Represented by Gallery De Novo. Stuart St, Dunedin https://www.gallerydenovo.co.nz
Image: Detail from Flora the Explorer, after Tiepolo. oil on sign board 2022 1200x1080mm
In recognition of her contribution to the New Zealand visual arts she was awarded an arts residency in the prestigious Leipzig International Art Program for three months in Leipzig, Germany (2010). Aratoi Fellow in 2012. Artist in residence at the New Pacific Studios in Vallejo, San Francisco 2014. Recipient of the William Hodges fellowship in Southland for 2018.
Artists Statement for Current Work:
Living in New Zealand far from the Baroque originals of Titian, Rubens and Tiepolo, I feel free to re appropriate the works of Old Masters, I hold these in admiration but despise the misogyny they represent at the same time.
I am flipping the narrative of these old stories of women in the background, as accessories, victims, pawns to be bribed and seduced, defined by patriarchal society.
In these new versions the men are obscured or removed from the original composition. The new versions become a narrative about the sisterhood being together about being seen in a woman’s story.
I am painting in oils but reject the slick realism of the past I paint with broad brushstrokes, dripping, smudging and blurring disrupting the realism and the old story. There is a push and pull between what remains of the original and the new surface of paint, sometimes - abstracted.
With every re appropriation made, I marvel at the skill of the Old Master and with every broad deleting brush stroke I feel empowered.
To be a female painter is itself a feminist act.
Please check out my up and coming exhibition" I Dont Want Your Golden Apple" Aug 28th 2022 Gallery De Novo
Represented by Gallery De Novo. Stuart St, Dunedin https://www.gallerydenovo.co.nz
Image: Detail from Flora the Explorer, after Tiepolo. oil on sign board 2022 1200x1080mm
