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.
I am an intuitive painter. My moody, gestural revisiting of the past offer figures from the past as if from behind a veil. As if time had flown too fast for them. The works are often humorous, and are brilliantly coloured, but their form also conveys the dissolution of the past in archival form and in collective memory through a technique that mimics the historical smudging and disintegration of old photographs their emulsions half dissolved. Through these smeary vistas, the women look out at us with that peculiar vividness that sweeps aside dress and posture. Through my practice they have a kind of second life.
Represented by Gallery De Novo. Stuart St, Dunedin https://www.gallerydenovo.co.nz
Image: Detail from Nativity 1200x1200mm 2019
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.
I am an intuitive painter. My moody, gestural revisiting of the past offer figures from the past as if from behind a veil. As if time had flown too fast for them. The works are often humorous, and are brilliantly coloured, but their form also conveys the dissolution of the past in archival form and in collective memory through a technique that mimics the historical smudging and disintegration of old photographs their emulsions half dissolved. Through these smeary vistas, the women look out at us with that peculiar vividness that sweeps aside dress and posture. Through my practice they have a kind of second life.
Represented by Gallery De Novo. Stuart St, Dunedin https://www.gallerydenovo.co.nz
Image: Detail from Nativity 1200x1200mm 2019
