HoboEye Art:
Hazel Dooney, Australia

At 27, Hazel Dooney is one of Australia's best-known young female painters. She first gained attention with her large, graphic, highly structured, and accessible imagery produced mainly in enamel on canvas (and, later, on board). This early work was inspired by a desire to confront the increasing commodification of art with stereotypical depictions of women derived from advertising and entertainment. It was a kind of glossy ‘anti-art’ – colourful, imposing, and yet devoid of emotional engagement. It underscored art’s somewhat uncomfortable relationship with today’s hyper-mediated consumer society.

Her new work is very different. It embraces the primal impulses of art, and reconciles a commitment to the figurative with a freer, more expressionistic exploration of line and colour. Created with watercolour, pencil and ink on cold-pressed paper, it contains chimerical layers of symbolism drawn from African and Carribean voodoo, punctuated by diaristic texts, poems and primitive incantations. As in nearly all her paintings over the past decade, versions of Hazel herself are the central figures. However, in these new works, the self-depiction is forensic, critical and even a little spooky. "One part magical realism, one part punk rock," is how one writer has described them. It's probably a good way to describe Hazel herself.

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