Annette Bezor - Artist: In the Adelaide City region of South Australia

The setting of the old Adelaide Girl’s High School Assembly hall in Grote Street conjures up images of the struggling painter - working away in an artist's garret - but for Annette Bezor, her studio offers the ideal base from which to expand on notions of female beauty. Annette explains:

“I think it requires a lot of patience and perhaps our beauty routines require a lot of patience. I think anybody who can blend can do this. If I actually took off my shirt you would see that my right arm (the arm I use to paint) is a lot bigger than the left. It's really like a lobster claw from all the blending that I do with it.

“I've been painting with large faces for about three years and around the studio you can actually see examples of all of that. That's from the first period, the Mona Lisa, and I only did one of that because the face is far too recognisable.

“I was very interested in how we classify beauty. So they've evolved and now for me, particularly the latest paintings are abstractions. You can't call this a portrait. This woman doesn't exist. She's the first one that I've made up. It's not a portrait and so it's colour and form - I consider them abstract.”

Annette Bezor's been painting for more than twenty years and recently returned from an exhibition in New York. Educated at Seacombe High - she discovered art late in life. Her earlier work often incorporated a collage of images - some manipulated in the computer to tell a story. Now it's much more abstract but often delving into the jigsaw puzzle of art history and culture like the painting which draws on a famous painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff which became immensely popular in 50s Australia.

“Most people remember it from a print that they might have had in their lounge room or their bedroom and she was called the ‘Green Lady’. I wondered why a green women was so popular. And the only thing I can think of is this exotic other. And the fact that we had no real knowledge of Asian people because the White Australian policy was still intact when this print was everywhere. So that's actually the start of the whole of them and that started me thinking about skin colour and how far you can stretch a face.

“I was exploring people's notions of beauty and how far I could go and still regard those faces as being beautiful and human and paint them green and yellow and pink.

“Also my work often is on a very fine line leaning towards kitsch and I'm very interested in how far and how close I can get to that line without going over.”

Annette Bezor is represented by the Greenaway Gallery in Kent Town. Her work is also featured in the book "A Passionate Gaze" - available from Wakefield Press bookshop which is just around the corner. Please email info@postcards.sa.com.au if you have any further questions.