"Living and working in the rat race city of Johannesburg, I am inspired to create a quiet world of my own away from all the daily noise. Within this still space, I am able to filter the busyness by creating paintings of people and their counterpart animals in an ordered world of alluring calm."
Angela Banks is a South African fine artist living and working in Johannesburg. She received a BA (Fine Arts) in 1999 and MA (Fine Arts) in 2003 from the University of Pretoria. She has since exhibited in various group and solo shows and has been on residencies in both France and China.
Banks is inextricably connected to the portrait as a subject, both human and animal. Her work, however, is not just a simple documentation. Banks is interested in what the individual projects but more importantly, she is after what lies behind the projection. She describes her work as "a surface search for the hidden reality or identity of the individual, the real story behind the facade."
In her work, Banks aims at capturing in permanent paint, a beautiful yet impermanent moment in time. Her meticulous attention to detail and form produce whimsical narratives of identity through the idiosyncratic relationships between human and animal.
