Angela Dufresne

Angela Dufresne is a painter and video artist. In her paintings, drawings, and performative works she confronts a world underpinned by fear and built upon the relationships between power and ownership. She creates polymorphic and non-heteronormative narratives devoid of hierarchy. Images of women are a frequent theme in her work: their faces painted close-up or naked bodies captured during moments of joyful self-acceptance. The artist paints using the wet-on-wet, or alla prima technique: without sketches or underpaint, she applies paint directly on the base layer. Thus, the painting preserves the trace of live experience instead of a particular expression. The scenes or characters depicted on the canvases are often the author’s own interpretations of cultural artefacts: from mythology through rococo to contemporary cinematography, and especially the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Dufresne claims that the basic motivation in her creative practice is the desire to feel compassion, so her references to other works are an empathic re-enactment.