Emerging selection: L.A. artist, Virginia Broersma

Born in San Diego, CA
Lives and works in Inglewood/Los Angeles, CA
2004, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting; Savannah College of Art and Design; Savannah, GA

Website: https://www.virginiabroersma.com/home
CV: https://www.virginiabroersma.com/cv

Whether it is on paper or on canvas, the gesture is quite impressive. This young artist has something to say for sure. She would be the combination of Willem de Kooning and Annette Messager. Willem de Kooning for the strong gesture – probably due to the similar Dutch origin? -. There’s no hesitation on the canvas, each brush stroke plays like a sentence that would demonstrate a purpose. And combination with French artist Annette Messager for the audacity to explore the complexity of female intimacy. Broersma is leaving progressively the representational to lead us to another narrative both more sensual and more violent. Very strong! an artist to follow, BCh

Virginia Broersma statement:

Recording and displaying the human image has been a perpetual impulse of humanity, from cave painting to selfies. The style and intentions may vary but two things remain constant: the complexity of what the image says about us, and how we try to control that message.  This is what draws me to the human form. I am interested in how even a fictional representation of a person can be conflated with measurements of legitimacy, beauty and the ideal.

My subjects are all connected to my discomfort with tidying up the unruly, taming nature, and the emphasis on being presentable as ways of affecting troublesome or unwanted natural states. It is in the moments of mess, shame, determination, indulgence, and accomplishment that we tend to be the most critical of ourselves and that is precisely why I am interested in reconsidering them.  Though it deviates from a realistic human form, my imagery elicits associations one may have with the body. This allows me to work through my own feelings about the presentation of my (or our) body/bodies as I consider the implications of difference, ambiguity and identification in those complicated moments.