 | Anita DeSoto makes myths with paint that are based on stories that have been drawn from the worlds of literature, opera, the Bible and the artist’s life. This amalgam of autobiography and drama, pleasure and pain, nature and dream, and so on firmly establishes the contradiction of paradox upon parable.
Most of these visual parables focus upon the human body and many feature the artist’s own body. This preparedness to offer herself (sometimes plus family and friends) as a metaphor of life is fundamental to the attitude of her work. Equally important is DeSoto’s open acknowledgement to the religious paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth century Europe. Her paintings then have an obvious lineage but equally apparent is that she has not simply copied or transplanted from art historical sources, for there is in DeSoto’s work always the narrative of contemporary human circumstance in amongst the theatre of dream and depiction of the impossible.
Iconography, symbolism and the surreal abound in her work.
Anita DeSoto lives in Waitati, north of Dunedin and exhibits in Dunedin and Auckland. She has lectured in Drawing at Otago Polytechnic School of Art since 2004. Awarded Parklane Art Award 2006, the McAlister Award 2004, Cleveland Award 2003. MFA Otago School of Art 2003, BFA Otago School of Art 2000.
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