| Deborah Poynton | |
| Alt: | Deborah Poynton |
| Birth Place: | Durban, South Africa |
| Education: | Rhode Island School of Design |
| Known For: | Painting 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.[2]
Born in Durban, South Africa in 1970, her parents founded and ran an anti-apartheid conference centre and died when she was a child. Poynton grew up in South Africa, England, Swaziland and the United States, often moving to different boarding schools.[3]
Poynton knew from the start that she wanted to be an artist.[4] 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.[5] [6]
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.[7]
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.[8]
From 11 July to 3 October 2021, Deborah Poynton’s most recent work was on display at the Drents Museum in Assen. The exhibition entitled Beyond Belief was Poynton's first museum exhibition in Europe.[9]