Today we’d like to introduce you to Dinora Justice.
Dinora, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was born in the south of Brazil at the tail end of the sixties, which makes me a middle-age woman artist… My mom was an art teacher, and I remember always drawing and taking painting lessons. When I was sixteen, my parents divorced and I went to vocational school to learn how to design and make shoes. I worked as a designer before I got my BFA and my MFA.
I got my BFA from the former Art Institute of Boston (now Lesley University) back in 2001, and I had my first solo show in 2003 at the gallery of Connie Kantar in Newton. It was a great success, and I kept having shown there and in other places until 2005, when my son was born and I had to slow down a bit.
In 2014 I earned my MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and I’ve been exhibiting steadily since then. Lately I was in a very good show at the Fitchburg Art Museum called “Fantastical, Political”, and I am currently represented in New England by Gallery NAGA.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
My paintings combine areas of acrylic marbling and areas painted with oils. Marbling is a centuries-old technique used mostly to decorate papers, but it can be adapted to pretty much anything. I started working with it in the spring of 2014 when I took a paper marbling workshop and started using the papers in my collages, and then experimenting on canvas. In 2015 I got nominated for and won a grant from the Saint Botolph Club Foundation to study marbling in fabric, and I have been marbling my canvases since then.
I have been working with landscape painting for a long time, and in thinking about the language we use to describe the natural world, the expression “mother nature” stands out for me because it feminizes the environment. This is only a problem because we live in a misogynistic society, and when we tolerate this, we also tolerate a patriarchy that uses its power to subjugate and exploit not just women, but anything that is vulnerable, including the natural environment. So, I have been using traditional portraits of women from art history – from artists such as Matisse, Ingres, Titian and Delacroix – to claim and re-contextualize them within an eco-feminist perspective.
How can artists connect with other artists?
Don’t be shy and reach out. It helps going to openings and talking with the artists. But I don’t mind working alone, it’s kind of a pre-requisite for creativity for me. That said, occasionally socializing is nice too.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Gallery NAGA represents me in Boston and New England, and Meg White and Andrea Dabrila are always happy to show my work to anyone who wants to see it. I will be having a solo show there in early 2018. www.gallerynaga.com.
CUBE Art Boston – Lisa Lebovitz and Beth Schlager – organize tours to artists’ studios, including mine. www.cubeartboston.com.
I welcome visitors to my studio, too. Just send me an email through my website to arrange a date. I am on Instagram: @dinorajustice. Online: www.dinorajustice.com Check out the “news” tab on my website to see where I’m showing. It includes exhibitions and events.
Contact Info:
- Address: My studio is in Newton Corner
- Website: www.dinorajustice.com
- Email: dinojust@gmail.com
- Instagram: @dinorajustice
- Facebook: dinora justice
Image Credit:
Photos by Ian Justice
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