ISABELLE ANGUITA

Originally from the south of France, Isabelle studied art in Aix-en-Provence and Montpellier before coming to Montreal where she has continued to paint, and get involved in community organisation. Since coming to Montreal in 1994, Isabelle has studied with the legendary Francoise Sullivan. She worked as a scene painter for a few years, and returned to painting seriously in 2005. She has shown in Montreal, Toronto and at the Frelishburg Festiv’Art.

Her painting style leans toward the abstract, although as you look more closely, body parts and human shapes, especially limbs, begin to emerge. The colours and compositions tend to be from the delicate end of her spectrum, although there are bold strokes and striking choices to be sure. Her artist’s statement evokes the mysterious power of pure form and colour:

“Invested with intuition, the act of painting is situated in a necessary zone of discomfort by which I try to join a state of absolved honesty, outside any control, raising a possible bridge towards the subconscious. As the gesture draws its imprint on the paper or on the canvas, the abstract masses, the strokes of brushes or charcoal give rhythm to the surface, creating zones of tension from which I bring bodies to the foreground. Voluntarily deformed, transplanted by heads and by members of animals, these corporal fragments evoke certain symbolic representations of dreamlike or fantastic universes. We understand that the human body is approached here on its psychic rather than its plastic dimension. The imperfections of the represented floating and enigmatic bodies mirror their uncertain humanity, in perpetual transformation and questioning; these monsters in transformation symbolize the difficulty being in a society lacking any value.

As the dream which, by multiple stratagems of displacement and dissimulation of direction, wants to confuse the memory of the dreamer, the images so created dissemble in order to reveal, distort in order to better illustrate the tension underneath. Balancing strength and fragility, the atmospheres speak without describing, touch without demonstrating.”