Gallery Artists: Ilona Anderson

"I am curious about life, fascinated and delighted by the fullness of being human. At the same time I am acutely aware of how often we are touched by painful situations. In South Africa, where I am from, we see all around us people suffering from poverty, AIDS, violence and corruption. Although these are issues that are heightened in that society, I know that all people experience suffering. What I want to do in my work is somehow to cut through all of this, and try to express some of the basic goodness and wise ordinariness that we all experience. I want to invoke a sense of delight, celebrate a way of knowing that reveals life to be both comical and terribly poignant. As an artist I am drawn to the interconnecting spaces, the multiple planes where our inner and outer worlds meet. I want to show where and how men and women see one another, where and how they allow themselves or us (sometimes secretly) to be seen. I paint/draw/sew/anatomize our social and sexual theater, affirming with all my strength a world of both joy and pain. As a woman, I am conscious of the body as intimate. As an artist I have turned my attention increasingly to the construction of installations, although I still paint and make embroidery as drawings."

Ilona Anderson is a South African artist with an international career, who came to Boston on a Fulbright Scholarship. She has many works in major South African collections including the National Gallery, the University of Witwatersrand Art Gallery, the Nelson Mandela Art Museum, as well as in private collections there and abroad. Ilona has exhibited in numerous museum shows in South Africa and America, such as The Carnegie International (in Pittsburgh), the Currier Museum Gallery of Art (NH) and all the museums in South Africa. In 2005 she was included in the SENTIMENTAL IMAGE, show at the DeCordova Museum (MA) curated by Nick Capasso & Alexandra Novina.

Title: A South African Tea Party(04-06) Tea Cups

Title: A South African Tea Party(04-06) Tea table

Title: A South African Tea Party(04-06) wall drawing

<< Back to All Gallery Artists