georgannedeen.com

Known for her unconventional methods of circumnavigating the minefields of psychological chaos, Deen says the matrix of indifference to corruption, and the need to record something, anything that acknowledged witnessing the drama of a dying world, brought to mind the idols of her youth: Goya, Ensor, Grosz and Dix, and the underground cartoonists who ignited her love of black humor. Driven by an awareness of the sheer volume of blabber that has smoked out all reasonable attempts to locate the truth in this shifting soap opera, she adopted the role of a court painter and PR agent for the age of fatuity, and proceeded to advance the notoriety of the sordid character types and events in formal (psychic) portraiture.

Georganne Deen is an artist, poet and musician whom the LA Times described as charming, fierce and inspiring.
Born in Fort Worth Texas, she wrote poetry and prose from an early age with a Goya-esque eye for subjects deemed inviolable in polite society. At East Texas State University she studied with printmaker Lee Baxter Davis who fostered a small group of artists devoted to the experimental narrative, which included underground comics and their incendiary, highly nuanced documentation of human nature. In 1980 Deen moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts.
The rich trappings of the California lifestyle: new age and glamour marketing, pulp illustrations and commercial graphics of all epochs coalesce with her own distinctive visual sensibilities to form a vocabulary that is both intimate and deliberately universal. Reporting on the depths and heights of consciousness, where we’ve gone wrong, what’s holding up progress and the occasional glimpse of paradise, has been a constant project for Deen, one that doesn’t lend itself to formulas or processes. The results can be painstaking, messy affairs at times but they convey experiences charged with splendor and turmoil.
Deen has had solo exhibitions at The Power Plant, Toronto, The MAC, Dallas, The Dunedin Museum, New Zealand, Van Horn, Duesseldorf, Smith-Stewart, NY, Brand 10, Ft. Worth, Studio Camuffo, Venice and Christopher Grimes, Santa Monica. Group exhibitions include LACMA, The Drawing Center, NY, ENTWISTLE, London, The Aldrich Museum, Conn, The Blanton Museum, Austin, Museum for Contemporary Art, New Orleans, Mary Boone, Villa Merkel, Esslingen Germany, Museum de Fortuny, Venice, The Center for Contemporary Art, Dallas. She lives in Joshua Tree, California.