Two Birds v2

A question I get asked a lot is “who is it? Do you know them?” Most of the time the answer is no, it’s a stock photo. Most portraits I paint I choose because they inspire me and tell me they want to be painted, or it could be a particular mood I want to convey and will trawl through social media or stock sites to find a portrait that would match.

For this one, this face found me. I just loved the way the light sat, and the mood portrayed. I drew out a sketch and planned it, breaking out from the then smaller tighter portraits I was painting. I had yearned to paint something bigger and bolder.

The work became part of the Second Strand series, circa 2017. Unsold, it was revamped as part of Just Quietly. Reflecting upon popular culture with layers of current affairs and other aesthetics. The window shapes on the left, and the skeleton anatomy were a response to the churches being burned in Canada after children’s bodies were found buried beneath a number of schools. I wanted this to be subtle, a gentle layer upon the amalgamation of textures within the work. The other imagery was chosen with my love for graphic art and typography. Blended with what was existing for a composition that felt balanced and and expressed the mood I wanted.

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Deanna Mosca thanks the traditional owners of the land on which she lives and works on, the Wardandi people of the Noongar lands, in the south west of Western Australia.

Deanna works through multiple disciplines, being trained in fine + digital mediums, from paint and paper, ceramics and weaving, to digital illustration and 3D animation. She explores the spirit and rich history of nature and our intricate relationship with it, as we face the devastation of climate change and other societal issues in our postmodern world.

Juxtaposing line, colour and texture with symbolism, Deanna draws insight from pop culture, often giving it motion and depth, which allows us to dive deeper into the experiences of our modern world. Having grown up in regional Australia, she is surrounded by flora and fauna, where she is forever inspired by these and our first nations people whom showed immense care for our world, and pays homage to them and the land through her work.