Candice Dawn Blignaut

For an artist whose work is concerned largely with the pursuit of definition, Candice Dawn Blignaut sits uncomfortably with easy classifications. Reluctant to ascribe unambiguous qualities to her work, she considers it driven as much by passion and intuition as by insight and skill. Strikingly graphic, her canvases are darkly humorous, intricate and unfussy, highly personal as well as satirical.
Candice’s charcoal lines, while confident, are loose; they multiply on themselves. The limited palette of her work – the dramatic charcoal on pale oil and resin backgrounds – serves to accentuate these lines.

Animals occur frequently in Candice’s work, much more so than human figures. They serve, however, as symbols of humans’ inner worlds. Animals, lacking egos, are the perfect carriers of projected meaning.

While her myriad drawn and painted lines add information to the surface, Candice also uses erasure to remove lines, stripping the charcoal dust and unravelling the images. She strips what she creates to its bare bones. By creating the skin of these creatures, then deconstructing it, Candice tests what lies underneath the surface to see if it will hold. The simple eloquence of her mark-making and mark-taking leaves us with what is essential.