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Deborah Poynton

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Deborah Poynton
Born1970 (age 53–54)
Durban, South Africa
EducationRhode Island School of Design
Known forPainting realism

Deborah Poynton (born in 1970) is a South African painter best known for her monumental, hyper-realistic, hyper-detailed, nude portraits, usually of friends and family.[1] She lives and works in Cape Town.

Early life and education

Born in Durban, South Africa in 1970, her parents founded and ran an anti-apartheid conference centre and died when she was a child.[2] Poynton grew up in South Africa, England, Swaziland and the United States, often moving to different boarding schools.[2]

Poynton knew from the start that she wanted to be an artist.[3] Before returning to South Africa to paint, she attended the Rhode Island School of Design for two years between 1987 and 1989, but did not graduate.[4][5]

Career

Poynton's paintings are more about the act of looking, of exposing the "trickery" behind traditional artistic practices, than they are windows onto a surreal world. By constructing spaces, placing slightly discordant objects amongst seemingly natural landscapes, Poynton creates a tension within her work that is intended to make the viewer uncomfortably aware of the act of perception. While most of her work can be categorized as realism, a few series depart from her usual aesthetic in a more abstract project. Her current exhibition, Scenes of a Romantic Nature, draws on her connection to Germany by referencing the landscape paintings of German artist Caspar David Friedrich.[6]

Her work often conflates tropes from traditional art history, from compositional techniques to poses of her subjects, and the indices of contemporary life to create a sense of chaotic inscrutability; in this way, Poynton creates work which is aesthetically engaging and intellectually confounding. This quality of her work is exemplified in her series Safety & Security, 2006.[7]

References

  1. ^ Anonymous. "Deborah Poynton". Artsy.net. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  2. ^ a b "Deborah Poynton's Model for a World: A Survey of 25 Years of Painting". The New Church Museum. 2014. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
  3. ^ Ogidan, Lagun (February 11, 2015). "Deborah Poynton: Scenes of a Romantic Nature". Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  4. ^ Norman Walter, Meghan (2009-03-10). "Deborah Poynton: Everything Matters at ACA Gallery". burnaway.org. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
  5. ^ "Deborah Poynton: Scenes of a Romantic Nature". Contemporary And (in German). Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen. 2015. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
  6. ^ Thurman, Chris (March 6, 2015). "Half Art: Shoddy Presidents Far from Scene of Idyll". www.bdlive.co.za. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  7. ^ H (June 2006). "Deborah Poynton". www.artsouthafrica.com. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
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