BrigitteDannibale

Originally from Los Angeles, Brigitte moved to the
island of Kaua’i in 1993, after studying art in Santa
Monica, California. She moved to the island to focus
solely on her art, far away from the noise and glitz
of LA. She moved into an old plantation home built
in the 20’s that somehow managed to survive
hurricane Iniki with only minor damage. This is
where her love affair with Old Hawai’i blossomed.
While distributing her time between painting and
restoring the home, Brigitte’s work began to
change. The home caught the attention of a local
architect who hired Brigitte to help him bring the
feeling of Old Hawai’i to a new project he was
developing. The project was like a giant canvas for
Brigitte and the project received much acclaim. Her
vision was in high demand and proved to be
rewarding on an artistic as well as pragmatic level.
The homes and projects were unmistakably her,
and the walls were garnished with her original art. It
is the best of both worlds, not only creating the art
but actually making art out of the the places that
would house her originals.

Brigitte has an incredible talent for seeing the
potential of over looked or discarded things and
spaces. She has and continues to support her art
by making a living designing and transforming
space. Her love for old things and the memories
they symbolize combined with her sense of
functionality and use of space, makes exciting a
potentially mundane task. The years she has spent
bringing old homes back to life and creating new
homes with an old home’s soul have definitely
influenced her art. Previously her work was primarily
classical in regard to style but now has evolved into
multi dimensional symbols and icons, loaded with
associations, both personal and universal.

The remnants of the projects she has worked on,
(Vintage fabric and tile to wood and materials
salvaged from demolition, to curios collected by her
through a variety of sources) get a new lease on life
by being incorporated into her art. “ I have collected
scraps that now swim beneath the surface of these
paintings.” “With glazes, layers, collage and paint, I
play with depth, foreground and emotion.”
Sometimes an image dominates the space, others
recede like a whisper, quiet but insistent. The result
of a contradictory collage like this is not a pastiche
but an original, self contained creation is due to the
intellectual caliber and design skills of it’s creator.

But this does not make it light fare. Brigitte uses
familiar ingredients but combines them in a way
which is constantly surprising. Terms such as
Classicism and Romanticism, drama and prose, the
festive and the mundane are stripped of the
comfortable but sloppy clichés surrounding them
and returned to their original essence, ennobled by
a new, unrelenting stringency. Does this make
Brigitte a Post-Modernist artist? Or is she not a
modern artist in the new sense of the word
demanded by the new circumstances of our times?
But these categories themselves have also fallen
victim to D’Annibale’s intellectual purges and in light
of her actual works the questions become futile and
redundant. The fact that this happens is what
singles D’Annibale out as a truly great artist;
because she refuses to be labeled, because she
questions the very principle of labeling, because
she forces us to rethink traditional categories of art
even those we have created ourselves. And above
all because she teaches us to look at art, all art not
just hers with new eyes which may have lost their
star dust but are certainly better focused.

If you want to see more images of Brigitte's artwork,
please, click here or contact us:
info@poipufinearts.com

Brigitte A. D'Annibale