Candice Dawn B
After graduating from the Johannesburg school of art in 1992, Candice gave free reign to her wide talent in photography with the occasional commissioned work. Within a few years a more driven and disciplined approach to painting evolved.
Candice Dawn B’s dramatically creative work has a passionate, flamboyant quality. Its sensuality and liberality of composition reflects her early exposure to the disciplines of drama, music and ballet when she studied Art, and even her involvement in Martial Arts, which she taught for many years. Candice’s work has a clear energy about it which comes from her own adventurousness, the pleasure she gets out of life, and her warm exuberant personality.
She is an adventurous soul who lives by her innermost instincts, and instead of dreaming about the future, she lives her dreams out in the present. “I love the unexpected, so I don’t need to dream about my future, because I know that what I’m doing will take me to a future that can only get better. I trust my gut feel, and this way life is always exciting.” She also has a healthy respect for what emerges from her creativity’s unchartered territory – “most of what I have accomplished in my paintings is by mistake or experiment, an unexpected”.
Two years ago brought the end of an era in Candice’s life, and her creative energy prompted her to give full attention to her art. She developed unique heavily embossed, opulent, abstract works which were drawn from her love of the baroque with textured filigree, and deep rich colours. These works, created with multi-media such as gold, silver and copper leaf, resins, glazes, gessos and oils, have an aura of the Italian Renaissance, and even something of Shakespearian drama, with their sensual physicality.
Right from the start this artist has had an awesome degree of professionalism with her fine attention to detail, her bold, sometimes decadent colours and finely wrought textures. Candice has a rare talent for combining simplicity of design with her intricate detail so that both complement each other in a way that makes her work generous, evocative, very appealing, and uniquely contemporary.
