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Bell, Deborah

Born: 1957 Johannesburg

A painter of figures.  Works in oil and charcoal.
Studies: 1975-78 University of the Witwatersrand, gaining a BA(FA) in 1977 and a BA (Hons) in 1978; 1981-85 University of the Witwatersrand, under Robert Hodgins (qv), Giuseppe Cattaneo (qv), Paul Stopforth (qv), Professor Alan Crump and Terry King (qv), being awarded and MA(FA).
Profile: A founder member of Possession Arts.  1983-85 a part time lecturer in the Department

of Architecture, University of the Witwatersrand; 1985 a part time lecturer in the Fine Arts Department, University of South Africa; 1986-87

a full time lecturer at the University of South Africa.  1986 spent two months in Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Exhibitions 1982 Market Gallery, Johannesburg, first of two solo exhibitions; she has participated in many group exhibitions from 1983 in SA; 1985 Cape Town Triennial; 1986 University of the Orange Free State, joint exhibition with Sybille Nagel (qv), Johann Moolman (qv) and Keith Dietrich (qv); 1987 (qv) and William Kentridge (qv) touring SA.
Represented Durban Art Gallery; Johannesburg Art Gallery; SA National Gallery, Cape Town; Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg; University of Natal; University of South Africa; University of Witwatersrand.
References De Kat December/January 1986 & May 1986; Fair Lady September 1986

See-line Woman Dressed in Red; Makes her Man Lose his Head 

See-line Woman Dressed in Red; Makes her Man Lose his Head 

 

Following the birrh of her son, Bell turned to watercolours, later switching to diluted acrylic paints, because working with oil paints and turpentine seemed too toxic while breast-feeding a baby. It was almost twenty years before she returned to oils in 2010 in homage to her former teacher and friend, Robert Hodgins, Consciously emulating his practice of using glazes to create figures and objects through colour, she began to allow images and the meanings they generate to emerge through the process of painting.

 

Always interested in the tactile quality of oils, Bell's shift in medium went hand-in-hand with a renewed concern to explore the carnal lives of women. But unlike her early paintings of lovers trapped in fleshy bodies and claustrophobic interiors, the  women  who startd emerging from her canvases are single, self-assured and assertive. While some have discarded  their red shoes, thereby  signaling that they are without artifice, others affirm the control they have over their own destinies by carrying them.

 

Echoes of Bell's fascination with red shoes, which dates back as far as the early 1990s when she worked on an animated collaborative project with Robert Hodgins and William Kentridge, titled Easing the Passing (of the hours), can be found in the songs of some of rhe musicians she listens to while painting, norably Tom Waits and Nina Simone. She loves Wait's ''Red Shoes by the Drugstore', a song about botching a jewelry store heist, in which a man tries to steal a diamond for his woman because 'he loved the way she looked in those red  shoes.'

 

But as the title suggests, See-line woman also invokes a 19th century American folk song, famously recorded by Nina  Simone in 1964. Originally about prostitutes - sea

lions waiting for sailors as they disembark from their boats, the song celebrates the

power of women who make men lose their heads: 'Empty his pockets and wreck his days, Make him love her, And she'll fly away', Having achieved her goal, the woman

in rhe Nina Simone rendition bends down, picks up her shoes and throws them over her shoulder, before turning around and walking away.

 

Sandra Klopper

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